Hearts of Smoke and Steam

by Andrew P. Mayer

  He couldn't help but smile a little bit as he watched the desperation on her face turn to anger. “Damn you, sir!” she said, and flung herself at him.

  He had barely wrapped his arms around her when the harpoon tore free.

  There was a terrible sensation in the pit of his stomach as they swept up and across the deck like a pendulum, veering towards the pilot's tower. For a moment it seemed as if they would smash straight into it. Emilio clutched Sarah as tightly as he could, crushing the pole in between them. His grip on her felt wrong, and he knew he was relying too much on his feet to hold him steady. If only they had been given a moment more to prepare. Perhaps they could still jump off…

  Emilio looked up and saw the horrified face of one of the ferry's crewmen as they swung rapidly toward the window of the bridge. Underneath his white hat, the man's eyes were wide and his mouth was open. Emilio imagined that his own expression must have mirrored his as they careened toward each other.

  Just before the inevitable impact, there was a gut-churning lurch as he and Sarah were jerked up into the air. The tip of the spear scraped the roof, tilting them over sideways. And then, the moment before Emilio realized that this might be their last chance to let go, it swung free.

  They rose up and away from the boat, hanging above the open water as the damp wind whistled past them. As they rose into the sky and the world beneath them shrank, Emilio could feel the terror inside of him growing. He looked around the shaft of the spear and over at the girl, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring mile. This had all been a huge mistake, and now they were both going to die for it.

  “I find myself in your arms a second time,” she said. Her voice was calm, and almost cheerful. It sounded like she had gotten over her own trepidation. “And yet I still don't know your name!” He broke his gaze away from the dark water beneath them and turned to look up at the girl's face. He was shocked to see that Sarah was grinning. Perhaps he'd misjudged her; it seemed she was a genuine Paragon after all.

  “Is Emilio Armando!” His voice was trembling and high, and he barely recognized it. Hoping to salvage some of his manhood, he tried to widen his own smile.

  “Hello, Emilio!” she replied with a weak smile. “I can tell by the look on your face that we both think you came up with a spectacularly bad idea!” Neither one of them laughed, but he appreciated her effort to lighten the mood.

  Emilio nodded up toward the balloon, although he couldn't bring himself to actually look. Not yet anyway. “We are going to be up there!”

  “Yes.” Sarah looked up to their destination and squinted. He could feel her arms underneath his, clenching him tightly. He supposed the thick gloves on her hands might do a poor job of hanging on. “And soon, with a little bit of luck!”

  Pulling together all the courage he could muster, Emilio tilted his head upwards. She was right—the balloon wasn't very far away, and the black gas-bag loomed larger with each passing second.

  This close, the machine appeared to be far larger than he had originally thought. The gondola was tapered in the front and back like a boat, and it seemed as if the balloon grew straight out of it. The construction of it was mostly metal, with steel plates along the bottom, probably intended as armor—although they wouldn't protect the balloon.

  Protruding from either side were a series of long struts. Each had a series of propellers attached to them, with a larger one at the end. The spinning blades pushed the ship through the air.

  Sticking out from the back of the gondola was a mad jumble of pipes in all different sizes and shapes—belching out smoke and steam.

  Emilio was no stranger to the fear he felt. It was as if someone had stuck pins into the tips of his fingers and traced the pain back through his body with shards of glass. His joints were locked into place as if he were a statue.

  He had always been terrified of heights, and his father had spent days working to make his son unafraid of what scared him. In the end, he had been mostly successful. And yet, when the time came to prove his bravery, he had failed to act. He had been a coward and his loved ones had all paid the price for it.

  Emilio forced himself to look down. He could see that they were now hundreds of feet above the river and still rising straight up. The balloon wasn't only winding in the cable, but climbing higher as it went, and they were flying well above the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. He was higher in the sky than he had ever been before. His father would have been proud.

  When he looked up again, they were only fifty feet or so away from the bottom of the ship. Emilio could clearly see where the cable was being reeled back in through a hole under the nose. It was impossible to judge the size of it perfectly, but he doubted that both he and the girl would fit.

  “I wonder,” Sarah said, speaking his thoughts more clearly than he could ever hope to, “if we shouldn't figure out a plan for what we do when we get up there.”

  “Yes, I see,” were the only words he could manage to say.

  Sarah tried again, “What do you think we should do, Emilio?”

  It seemed more likely that the girl would fit through the hole. She could ride the spear all the way into the ship, although it was impossible to say what waited for her inside. It would be tragic for them to have made it all this way only for her to be mangled by some hidden mechanism. Even so, he envied her compared to the fate that the plan which had just formed inside his head spelled out for him. “You stay, I jump.”

  “What? That's ridiculous.”

  The end of their ride was coming closer very quickly now. There would be little time before he had to act. “I'm okay! C'è una scala…”

  “I don't speak Italian!”

  Emilio couldn't help but roll his eyes a little bit. Why were women constantly worried about the details of things they couldn't control? “Stairs!” he shouted.

  They were only a few yards away now. The hardest part would be flinging himself toward the right direction.

  “When it comes to falling, three meters, ten meters, a hundred meters,” his father had used to say, “it will all kill you just the same when you touch the ground.” But it did make a difference to the young Emilio—because the higher he went, the longer he would have to ponder his death before the end. And right now they were very, very high.

  As he tensed himself to jump, he felt something brush against his lips.

  The girl had kissed him…“For luck!” she shouted. “Now go!”

  A feeling of pleasant surprise muted his terror, and Emilio felt lighter as he threw himself into the air. Then, an instant after he met the void, the feeling melted away. The rungs, which had been zooming towards him just a moment before, now looked dangerously remote. He felt disconnected from his hands as he watched them claw through air, desperate to find something to grab onto before gravity asserted itself.

  Just as he was beginning to fall, he felt his fingers finally wrap around one of the metal bars, but momentum was still on his side, whether he wanted it or not. The ship slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him and breaking his grip.

  As he began to drop, Emilio realized that his worst fear had come true. Now only empty air lay between him and the dark water far below.

  If the hole in the nose of the airship was any larger than Sarah herself, it wasn't by much. She hugged herself to the shaft of the harpoon as tightly as she could, willing herself to be as small as possible, but it would only take the slightest brush of metal against flesh to peel her off the shaft and send her broken body tumbling down.

  As she passed through from light into darkness, she felt light pressure against her shoulder, but there was no flash of pain or damage. Her eyes popped open as the spear began to tilt upwards, her feet sliding off from the small flange she had been standing on. She tried to hold on, but her arms, already tired, could no longer hold her as she swung downwards.

  Sarah was falling through the air, and worse—she was dropping directly back toward the hole she had come in through. The idea that she cou
ld have made it this far only to end up falling back out of the ship was as ridiculous as it was likely.

  She slammed into the hull at the edge of the void, her legs crashing into the metal sheeting of the deck with a bang while her torso hung out over open space.

  For the first instant she was too stunned by the fall to react—it was all she could do to try and hold herself in place, and not slip out of the ship. Cold air rushed by her face, the wind clutching at her like a thousand pairs of tiny hands, all of them intent on dragging her outside. As she slid forward, Sarah realized just how precarious a position she was truly in—only the weight of her legs was keeping her from sliding out of the ship, and it was only just enough.

  Sarah felt Wickham's mask dangling down from around her neck, blowing and twisting in the breeze as she slipped slowly forward with every breath. If she was going to pull herself to safety, she had to do it quickly.

  Her hands reached behind her, scrabbling for purchase against the smooth metal of the deck, but her thick gloves, so useful for punching villains, were unable to find any grip.

  Desperate for any way to drag herself back from the edge, she clamped her fingers tightly around the sides of the hole. Her gloved fingers slipped off as she pulled, but with concerted effort she was able to shove herself backwards until the daylight slid out of view.

  Sarah rolled over onto her back and fought back a rising urge to be sick by taking a few deep breaths. Above her she saw the tip of the harpoon she had ridden up to the ship. It was safely locked back into the cruel-looking device that had been used to launch it against the ferry, ready for its next moment of mayhem.

  The harpoon launcher itself was massive—easily twice as long as the shaft it launched, but the springs, gears, and other mechanisms were all exposed, the large mainspring locked back into place. She wondered who had invented it.

  Thinking of the spear reminded Sarah of Emilio, and she said a little prayer for him, hoping that he had managed to make it onboard as well.

  Underneath her, Sarah could feel the wind thrumming and rattling against the metal of the hull. The surface was cold and hard, and something was sticking uncomfortably into her back.

  When she sat up to take a look around at her environment, she saw that there were hinges on either side of the “floor” that she had landed on. What had been bruising her was a latch. She looked down and saw that the entire floor was actually a large hatch, held closed by a mechanism that seemed uncomfortably frail.

  She stood up, but was still forced to hunch over. The space was dark and stuffed with machinery, the walls just large enough to allow someone to slip around to work on the devices while the ship was flying, if the need arose.

  She headed toward the back of the ship. With every step, the ship's engines and the hum of the propellers became louder and louder.

  Without warning, the ship lurched underneath her feet. Sarah's head banged painfully against a metal rod hanging down from the ceiling in front of her. At the bottom of it were a series of mirrors that twisted back and forth, focusing on a porthole cut into the floor of the ship. It was obviously a viewing system of some kind, the mirrors designed to carry the image up to another part of the ship. She moved, hoping that whoever was responsible for controlling the craft hadn't seen her face reflected in them.

  Taking a moment to rest against the wall, Sarah examined the craftsmanship all around her. The framing had been constructed from strips of metal bolted together, creating a complicated scaffolding from which everything hung.

  The structures made everything appear unfinished and insubstantial: more the “shape” of a machine than a machine itself. Compared to the solid, chunky, and deeply crafted designs of Darby, the work here was almost ethereal, as if it had been built by a very talented spider who spun his inventions together like a web.

  But as impressive as it was, what Sarah needed most was a way forward. Peering down the hull, she saw a shaft of light trickling down a few yards ahead. As she pulled herself closer, she saw that the illumination came from a hatch cut into the ceiling. She searched around, but there were a number of barriers between her and the exit, and there didn't seem to be any way to actually climb up to it.

  Sarah had almost given up before she suddenly noticed that the scalloped “ribs” that rose up the walls were designed to act as ladders. She grabbed one of them and gave it an exploratory tug. When it seemed sturdy enough, she started to climb upwards to the hole. “A very clever spider indeed,” she remarked to herself.

  When she reached the hatchway, she carefully poked her head up through it. The new space was gloomy, but not too dark, as there were glass plates sealed into the walls at regular intervals. It was also larger than she had imagined—the dimensions of a good-sized ballroom.

  The gas-bag rose up through the center of the room, the thick canvas curving up from the floor to form a broad, sloping ceiling above them.

  Her eyes continued to adjust as she peered around, and with a shock she saw the squat form of a man standing right behind her!

  Before she could dive back down the hatch, a pair of rough hands grabbed her shoulders and yanked her up. Her knees banged painfully against the edge of the hatch as the stranger pulled her through.

  Sarah found herself flung against the “wall” of the ship—essentially a series of metal struts laid out against some kind of treated canvas. The wall rose up and held onto the bag with a series of rope hooks that were laced through the grommets that had been stitched into the canvas.

  She looked up at the man who had thrown her and saw a familiar smile. “Look what we have here—it's a flying rat.” The Bomb Lance had removed his frame, and was holding some kind of gun in his hand. The weapon looked complicated, but the shining metal barb that stuck out of the business end of it sent a simple-enough message. He smiled when he noticed Sarah looking at it. “Did you bring yer special gun as well, girlie?”

  Sarah could feel the weight of the useless weapon in the pocket of her coat. “Yes,” she said meekly. She had come all the way up here to try and stop this man, only to be taken prisoner by him within minutes of her arrival.

  Murphy laughed, and turned to speak to someone she couldn't see. “Look at her, Monsieur. You wouldn't think such a little mouse could be so dangerous, but she managed to knock down both myself and Lord Eschaton.”

  “Size, she iz not important,” said a voice from within the darkness.

  Sarah turned to look for the man the Bomb Lance had referred to as “Monsieur.” She saw his silhouette at the other end of the gondola, and realized that by calling her “little,” Murphy was having a joke at the other man's expense. The man was tiny, perhaps an inch or two shorter than she was. He hunched over in a way that made him appear to be someone of advanced age.

  “I am not unawawe of ze barbs of ze Bomb Lance.” The man spoke with a heavy French accent and a lisp. Even so, he punctuated his words with sarcasm. “But you should always wemember who it was who constwucted your new hawness.”

  As he stepped into the light, Sarah was shocked to see just how old the Frenchman truly was: his hair was pure white and stuck out from his head in thick tufts, revealing patches of bright pink skin underneath. His shoulders were deeply drooping, and his hand clutched a cane, which he leaned against heavily. She could just make out, underneath his fingers, that the head of the cane was a sliver globe. His eyes were covered by a pair of thick spectacles, held in place by a leather cord.

  His clothes were bunched and ill-fitting on his withered frame—a strange mix of a leather apron, suspenders, and thick rubber boots. There was also a large belt strapped around his waist, from which hung a variety of tools and gadgets, some of them familiar, others twisted and strange.

  The wizened figure walked over to her with an odd gait that landed firmly between a hobble and a run, as if he were in a terrible hurry even though he was constantly on the verge of falling over. The cane banged on the metal deck with every step, and the objects attached to his belt jingl
ed as they swayed. After each movement he had to pause as he pushed his cane out in front of him before taking another step forward.

  When he had covered half the distance between himself and Sarah, the wizened figure stopped and yelled back in the direction he had come from, “Fwancis, please bring ze ship back around.”

  “Oui, oui, Monsieur.” When she followed the source of this voice, Sarah saw that there was a platform in the front of the room that sat high up off the floor in front of a large glass window. Numerous panels, handles, and dials sprouted up from the deck to form a control panel in front of the ship's operator.

  Standing in front of the bouquet of devices was a small bear of a man with the demeanor and build of a boxer. He wore a pair of grease-covered overalls and a bowler hat so tight around his head that it seemed almost screwed on. The band around the hat brim showed off colors of the French flag—red, white, and green.

  From his accent, Francis was clearly American, although the French theme was continued in the large silver brocade patch of the fleur de lis sewn onto the arm of his white shirt. “Bon,” the old man replied, and turned his eyes back to Sarah.

  “So little girl, what iz eet that you thought you would accomplish by invading my airship? And where, may I ask, is your fweind who caused Mr. Muphee zo much twouble down below?”

  “I honestly don't know.” Sarah replied.

  The Bomb Lance narrowed his eyes and waved his gun menacingly. “Watch it there, girlie. Yer full of tricks, but I'll skewer you before I let you put any more holes in me, or blow me around again with that gun of yers.”

  Sarah ignored the Irishman and took a small curtsey in the direction of the old man. “We haven't been properly introduced, Monsieur. My name is Sarah Stanton.”

  “Ah yes well, you must forgive Mr. Muphee, madame. He has been wendewed incapable of mannews by an unfortunate act of birth.” The Frenchman bowed his head slightly. “You can call me le Voyageur.” He took another step closer to her and slowly examined her with his eyes. “But zis costume?” He lifted up his cane and pointed it at her. “You fancy yourself a hero?”