by Dan Willis
“So when we get there?” he asked, desperately trying to scrub the image of drinking blood from his mind’s eye.
Hickok opened his mouth, but before he could answer, Crankshaft emerged from the ladder leading down to the engine room.
“We’ve got a full head of steam, but New Georgia is almost a thousand miles from here. If we catch the trade winds, we should be there the day after tomorrow. And we’ll have to stop for water and coal somewhere along the way as well.”
“Good,” Hickok said. “Maybe by then, John will finish cleaning his gun.”
Chapter 20
Piston Falls
John felt the vibrations in the deck change and the rhythm of the airship’s engine shifted—ever so slightly. He wouldn’t have noticed it a week ago. He’d never been on an airship before then. Now he felt at home. He vaulted out of his bunk and scrambled into his clothes. The tiny cabin that had felt so confining at first seemed bigger, or maybe it was just that he wasn’t hitting his head on the shelves or his knees on the bunk anymore.
He emerged, buttoning up his waistcoat as he went, and dashed aft toward the galley. Mounting the steps two at a time, he emerged into the sunlit room where Hickok and Crankshaft waited for him, the latter grinning a wide, toothy smile.
Before John could speak, Crankshaft turned expectantly to Hickok, who wordlessly passed the mechanic a folded five-dollar bill, a sour expression on his face.
“We’re there,” John demanded. “Aren’t we?”
Crankshaft laughed, tucking the bill into the front pocket of his leather apron. “I told you he’d know.” He chuckled, more to himself than to Hickok, then he moved past John, slapping him on the shoulder affectionately, and descended the metal stair toward the engine room.
“There she is,” Hickok said, pointing out the open shutter of the round window.
John could see some scrubby trees rolling over a brown countryside that stretched out as far as he could see. Off to one side stood a cluster of homes and buildings, straddling a small river that seemed to run right through the middle of town. Beyond the town, the river ran straight to a small bluff where it pooled at the bottom of a silver column of falling water that undoubtedly gave the town its name.
A double ribbon of silver rails ran across the barren landscape into the near side of Piston Falls. John could see a steam engine puffing away on a siding, its fireman keeping the boiler stoked while the string of cars attached to it were being loaded. A stockyard and a large building that must have been the slaughterhouse stood just beyond the switchyard of the railroad.
Up on the bluff above the town stood a massive building of weathered gray boards holding up a glass-paneled roof. Two massive chimneys, one at either end, belched black coal smoke into the sky where it smeared out into a gray film that drifted lazily away. A waterwheel emerged from the building and churned vigorously in the river beneath a faded sign that read, in three-foot high letters, Solomon Flux Works.
“It doesn’t look like there’s a skydock up there,” John said.
“There’s only one in town,” Hickok said, pointing at one of several hotels near the center of the sprawling buildings.
John wondered about that. Why would such a large flux works not have a skydock? Piston Falls wasn’t a big town, but airships weren’t that uncommon. Surely someone wanted to ship goods by air instead of rail.
The chug of the engine changed again and John lost sight of the hotel with its empty and forlorn skydock. Sylvia was lining up for their descent to the town.
“Put on your gun belt,” Hickok said, slinging his duster over his shoulders and settling it in place. The dyed, purple leather had been cleaned and oiled and the brass plates that formed the enforcer symbol on the back were bright and clear of corrosion. Without any evidence of conscious thought, Hickok checked his short sword and pistol, making sure they were loose in their holsters and ready for action.
“Are we expecting trouble?” John asked as he finished tying the bottom of his holster around his leg.
“Rule number two, kid,” Hickok said as they drew even with the skydock. “Always expect trouble.”
He opened the door out onto the deck and John followed him across it and onto the skydock. For something ostensibly attached to the ground, it swayed in the wind and creaked alarmingly.
“What’s rule number one?” he asked, hurrying to keep up.
“Be prepared for trouble.”
The hotel clerk accepted the two-dollar docking fee with a sour expression that seemed to say that he didn’t like strangers, or talking to them. He liked it even less when Hickok asked who was in charge of the Flux Works.
“That’d be the Professor,” he said, his lips flapping over teeth yellowed by years of chewing tobacco. “Professor Solomon, I mean.”
“Where can I find him?” Hickok demanded when nothing else was forthcoming from the clerk.
“He’s over at the treatment center,” the clerk said. He pronounced the words slowly, as if he wished to hold onto them after they were said. “But he don’t see nobody when he’s workin’.”
“I think he’ll see me,” Hickok said in a voice that stated clearly that he was willing to enforce his privilege with as much violence as was necessary. “Where is this treatment center?”
“Across the bridge on the other side of town,” the clerk admitted. “It’s got a big red cross on it, you can’t miss it.”
Without thanking him, or saying another word to the yellow-toothed clerk, Hickok turned and walked out.
The street outside was bright with reflected sunlight, bouncing off the hardpan of the street, and John had to shield his eyes. When they finally adjusted, he saw a mostly empty street, strangely quiet for a railhead town. Without realizing it, John had remained on the porch of the hotel while his eyes adjusted. Before he could step off, someone grabbed his elbow in a firm grip.
“Spare two bits, son?” a withered voice asked.
He turned, and wished he hadn’t. A man sat on the porch on a hard wooden bench. His clothes, if they could be called that, consisted of rags the man had tied over his body to cover it. Some of the rags were new, while others were brown, the color of rust. A strange odor, like the smell of new iron, seemed to cling to the man, and, as John watched, a fat drop of blood welled up from beneath the skin of his cheek and ran down his jaw.
John had never seen a leaker this close before.
He started back, jerking his arm free from the old man’s grip and staring in horror at that drop of blood that slid, in no particular hurry, down the crags and lines of his face.
“Get yourself something to drink, old man,” Hickok said quietly, reaching around John to press a quarter into his outstretched hand. “It’s hot out here. Come on, John.”
John took a couple of stunned steps, being led by Hickok, before his legs started working again of their own volition.
“You harassing the leakers, Bill?” a firm voice with a southern drawl said. “I might have to take exception to that.”
Hickok froze and let go of John’s shoulder with his gun hand. The speaker was a short man with a Van Dyke beard and a whip-thin frame.
He wore a strange garment of leather, fitted with many tubes and valves that covered his entire body, reaching around to cover his cheeks and forehead as well. All that could be seen of the man himself were his blue eyes, his blonde beard, and the handles of two gleaming silver pistols tucked into his belt. Amongst the dark suit, only the eyes and the pistols stood out.
As Hickok’s eyes rested on the little man, he seemed to relax, but John felt the tension in the street tighten around him like a noose.
“I thought I told you what would happen if I ever caught you in my territory again, you little cheat,” Hickok growled.
The little man tucked his thumbs into the front pockets of his dark garment, just inches from the ivory handles of his guns.
“Well, this is New Georgia,” he said. “Not exactly your territory, now, is it?” He pull
ed his right hand out of his pocket, bringing with it a thin cigar. “Care for a smoke?”
“Seeing how this isn’t my territory,” Hickok said, his voice still low and menacing. “Don’t mind if I do.”
The tension evaporated like frost in the sunlight and both men laughed. Hickok bit the end off the cigar and accepted a light from the smaller man.
“What are you doing in these parts, Doc?” Hickok said, taking a puff. “This town’s a bit quiet for your tastes.”
“It’s this Solomon fellow, he claims he’s onto a cure.”
John suddenly put it together. The man in the black garment was a leaker, and his suit seemed designed to capture his lost blood and recycle it.
“Where are my manners?” Hickok said. “John Porter, meet Doc Holliday.”
John moved to shake the stranger’s hand, but froze upon hearing the name. Anyone who read a newspaper knew about Doc Holliday, one of the most notorious gunmen in the territories.
“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, John,” Holliday said, taking John’s hand as if it hadn’t stopped and shaking it courteously. “So,” he said. “What brings the big, hairy arm of the law all the way out here?”
Hickok nodded up at the flux works on the bluff. “Solomon hasn’t been shipping any flux in the last month. We want to know why.”
“You mean the man in Castle Rock wants to know,” Holliday said, a wry smile crossing his face.
“You heard about Dakota?”
“Everybody knows.” Holliday nodded. “You think Solomon had something to do with it?”
“Maybe. What’s your take on the man?”
“He’s shifty as a dust devil,” Holliday said, puffing on his cigar. “He makes a lot of promises, but I haven’t seen much progress toward the leaker cure he’s supposed to be on to.”
“Sounds like our guy.” Hickok looked at John and winked. “You want to come with us to the treatment center?” he asked of Holliday.
“Solomon’s not there,” he said as Hickok and John took a step. “No one’s seen him for a week. Strange too. He usually oversees the treatments personally. Last few days it’s been one of his men. I quit going. Something about those fellows gives me pause.”
“Any idea where Solomon went?” John asked.
“Not a clue, son, but if’n I wanted to find him, I’d start at his factory.” Holliday swept his cigar up at the dark shape on the bluff. “I don’t know much about making flux, but those chimneys have been smoking every day for the past month. That’s a lot of smoke for a factory that isn’t doing anything.”
Hickok grinned, his eyes sweeping down the narrow path that ran up from the town to the building on the bluff.
“Thanks, Doc,” he said. “You want to tag along?”
“Not me,” Holliday said, squinting up into the sun. “This heat is driving me to find a quiet place with amiable company and a cold mint julep.” He chuckled. “Or, in my case, perhaps a bloody Mary.”
Holliday shook Bill Hickok’s hand, then John’s, pronouncing it a pleasure to have met him, then walked away in the direction of a saloon.
The trail cut into the side of the bluff didn’t look too bad, but by the time they were halfway up, John was puffing like a bellows. Hickok slowed his pace to John’s but was otherwise unaffected by the climb. He seemed to possess some inner reservoir of strength that left him impervious to mere physical exertion.
Come on John, one leg in front of the other, it’s … it’s really … really simple. Robi could do it.
The image of Robi, wearing her simple loose shirt and pants, bounded into his mind’s eye and sped off up the trail like a deer spotting an empty meadow. She was sweating heavily, a strand of her hair clinging to her face where it had come loose, and John couldn’t help but notice that her simple garments were plastered to her sweating form in some very interesting—
“Watch where you’re going!” Hickok’s voice raked him back from the vision. He’d left the curving trail and was headed for a sheer drop off.
“Take a minute and rest,” Hickok said, sitting down on a rock beside the trail.
John flopped down gratefully beside him and closed his eyes for a moment. Try as he might, however, he couldn’t make the pleasant vision return to his thoughts. The scent of cigar smoke brought him back and he looked up to see Hickok puffing away on the remains of the cigar Doc Holliday had given him.
“Shouldn’t we keep going?” John asked. “Element of surprise and all.”
Hickok didn’t answer but pointed toward the waterfall below the flux works. A series of poles had been driven into the rock face at regular intervals and a thin black wire ran along from pole to pole until it reached the top.
“I’m sure someone’s reported our presence by now,” he said with a puff.
John berated himself for not noticing. Etherium Telegraphs were wireless but very expensive. A simple wired unit was cheap by comparison, especially if it didn’t have to go very far.
“Why haven’t they tried to stop us?” John said, looking up the bluff to where the trail finally reached the top.
“They don’t know why we’re here,” Hickok said. “They’re hoping they can give us whatever it is we want and we’ll just go away.”
“What happens when they find out we aren’t leaving?”
Hickok stood up, brushing road debris from his duster. “We’ll probably have to kill a few of them,” he said, crushing out his cigar and putting the remainder back in his pocket. “Keep your hand on your pistol, but don’t draw it till I tell you to.”
John felt sick as he gripped the polished handle of the weapon. The young air pirate cried out in his mind, leaping to a standing position on his skyrider, as if that tiny distance would avoid the blast from the shattergun. The blast took him full in the face and chest and he toppled backward out of John’s mind’s eye.
The flux work hadn’t been built on the bluff’s edge but rather a good score of yards back. When the trail finally clambered over the edge of the rise, it ran straight to a plain wooden door set in the side of the otherwise unremarkable building. The walls of faded boards, still clinging to the remnants of a sturdy green paint, stood three stories high, supporting a rounded glass roof. Giant fans occupied some of the roof panels, churning slowly and drawing the chemical odors away from the simmer tanks below. There were a few windows set here and there at odd intervals along the walls but they were choked with dust and cobwebs, giving no hint of what lay inside.
John’s gaze swept over the structure as he followed Hickok. Something about it bothered him, something about the solitary door and its status as the only way in or out of this side of the building. As they drew nearer, he could smell the first vestiges of the fluxing process, a bitter aroma not unlike urine.
Then it hit him.
“Bill,” he said, hastening to draw alongside the big Enforcer before he reached the door. “They’re making flux right now; in fact, they’re probably done.”
“How do you know?” Hickok asked.
“That smell, it’s spirits of heartshorn,” John said. “It’s one of the last things you add to flux. During the finishing process.”
“Looks like we got here just in time,” Hickok said, grabbing the tarnished brass doorknob. “Follow my lead.”
He turned the knob and pulled the door open. A foul, chemical stench, along with the smell of coal fires and soot, came rolling out from the dark space beyond and Hickok coughed before entering. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness beyond the door, John could see that he stood in a small, bare room, with a low bench along one wall and a counter on the other that opened into an office beyond. There were several shelves, presumably for cans of flux to be displayed, but they were empty and dirty, as if never used.
A thoroughly disreputable looking man with greasy blond hair and a dirty smock stood at the counter, watching them expectantly, as if he’d been aware of their impending arrival for some time.
“Welcome to the Solomon Flux W
orks,” he said in an ingratiating voice, inclining his head to Hickok. “What can we do for you?”
“My name’s Hickok … Bill Hickok,” he said, adding emphasis to the name so the greasy man would be sure not to miss it. “I’m a territorial Enforcer and I’m here to see Professor Solomon about an important matter. Please ask him to step out here for a moment.”
The man’s ingratiating expression slipped toward sour and his eyes darted to the lone door that led from the office back into the building proper.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “The professor is out of the factory today; perhaps he’s in town. Did you ask at the clinic?”
Hickok pulled out the remaining bit of his cigar and relit it, puffing smoke in the greasy man’s face before answering.
“What’s your name, mister?” he said.
“Fredrick Longman,” the man said.
“Well, Fredrick, I know Solomon is here,” Hickok said, grabbing the front of the dirty smock with his left hand. “So the only question is, are you going to tell me voluntarily, or am I going to have to beat it out of you?”
The greasy man’s eyes bulged in horror, darting to the door again. Almost on cue, two armed men burst through it into the office. They wore rough clothes and long dusters under broad-brimmed hats. Each of them carried a pistol and neither looked like a lab tech.
The first man had a bushy blond beard and a pink scar across his nose; his gun was already raised as the door burst open, but before he could train it on Hickok, the enforcer moved. Jerking the greasy man over the counter, Hickok used him as a shield as he drew his pistol and fired. The blond bearded man spasmed as Hickok’s bullet hit him square in the chest and his own shot went wide.
The second man fired from behind his partner’s falling body and John ducked as the shells tore holes in the wall over his head. Hickok’s gun barked in response and a second body hit the floor.
“Watch him,” Hickok said, pushing the greasy man at John as the sound of running feet echoed from beyond the open door.
Taking his pistol in his trembling hand, John pointed it squarely at Fredrick Longman in his dirty smock. Fredrick’s eyes were wide with terror and fixed on the barrel of the pistol.