His words seemed to have penetrated. The shotgun had a leather strap, and J.C. slipped it over his shoulder.
The armory was on the lower level, nearby the engine room. That seemed a good place to start searching for Prichard. The bridge was above them, where at least some of these rogues had to be, in order to keep the vessel in flight. Plans and contingencies whirled through Hamilton’s mind, but he didn’t let them overwhelm him. He maintained the cool thinking of a captain.
He took a step toward the ladder. They would stay to the ducts, out of sight. It was still possible they would find the chief scrabbling about in the tubes. At any rate, they could reach the engineering section this way and spy on it unseen.
But that one step was all Hamilton was able to make. The ship abruptly and violently lurched. It canted at a frantic angle, and the turbines cried out in distress. The deck was shaking underfoot. The vessel was in sudden descent, what felt like an uncontrolled plummeting. It was certainly no short downward jolt this time. Here was an emergency of the first order.
“We have to reach the bridge!” he shouted above the sudden din. J.C. was barely keeping his footing. There was no longer any time for cautious travel via the ducts. They would simply have to storm the ship’s command section. It was war now. The quickest way there would be through engineering.
Captain Hamilton Arkwright grabbed one of the repeaters, turned, and threw open the door to the armory. The Indomitable continued to careen on its downward trajectory. With J.C. by his side, he started along the shuddering passageway.
FIVE.
JONNY HAD seen dead, and he had seen dying. Dead was preferable. Dead was done, with no need of any further effort on anyone’s part, except maybe to drag the body away. The dead didn’t trouble anybody, other than rousing the occasional twinge of grief.
But the dying were a goddamned handful.
Jonny hated this ship. He hated having been abducted aboard it by a man he should never have trusted. Brixton was a secret rebel. When he’d been an honest thief, working as one of Kane’s lieutenants, he had been trustworthy. He might have cut a man’s throat, but there would be a concrete reason for it, a reason involving money. Crime was like that. The criminal organizations that succeeded best were always those that operated like businesses.
But, instead, Brixton had been living a secret double life as a member of the Colonial Underground. That was a cause. A crusade. It couldn’t be cast in strictly monetary terms. There was passion involved, skewing all logic. It was like when Jonny himself had mixed sex with work by taking up with Kane. That had been a mistake, yet it was one he’d been more or less helpless to make. His cock was in charge of those decisions.
He snapped back into the perilous present moment. None of these musings would help him now in his predicament on board this dangerous, evidently failing airship. And certainly nothing he thought was going to aid this dying man he and Hamilton had stumbled upon in what looked to be the ship’s engine room.
“Chief!” Hamilton said, kneeling to take the bleeding man in his arms, even as the deck continued to jolt and tilt.
Jonny could scarcely stay on his feet. He’d taken the shotgun off his shoulder and held it tightly, as if the instrument could provide some comfort. Truth was, the thing scared him. He hadn’t been lying when he told Hamilton he’d never used a gun before. He was no assassin, no soldier. Criminals who regularly used firearms often met with sticky ends. At the least, guns changed the dynamic of any given situation, increasing the stakes, upping the potential peril.
“Cap-Cap… tain…,” coughed the man on the deck. He had iron gray hair and a bulldog’s face. He looked to be a muscular man, but his strength meant nothing now, not with the injury to his chest. It hadn’t come from a gunshot, Jonny saw. This was a knife wound, a lethal one. The knife itself lay bloody on the floor.
“Prichard!” Hamilton said, plainly trying to hold back the grief from his voice. “Prichard, don’t worry. We’ll get you patched up. But what’s happened here? The ship—that man—”
Only then did Jonny notice the other body. It lay several feet away on the canted deck, limbs in disarray. The throat was savagely bruised, eyes open and lifeless. It was the man who had driven the truck to the airdock at Algiers Point. This Prichard person must have strangled him, receiving his own terminal wound in the struggle.
Jonny looked around at the huge, gleaming engines. These were the guts of the grand airship. He couldn’t begin to understand the complexity of the apparatus, but the many moving and steaming and seething parts appeared to be operating at an alarming speed. The tanks, pistons, and gears shook visibly, as if overtaxed. And all the while it felt like the whole ship was dropping downward. Jonny’s insides told him they were falling, and fear had a terrible hold on him. He didn’t want to die plummeting out of the sky to be smashed on the earth below. What a dreadful death that would be.
“F-Forget about me, Captain.” Prichard gripped the front of Hamilton’s coat with a bloody hand, obviously fighting to hold on to a few more moments of life. “I… I had to sabotage the engines—”
“No!” The captain banged the butt of the repeater on the floor. “We’ll retake the ship!”
“Too… late. I saw what they did. The shelling. My God. Horror. A train. Military train. Coach after coach, bodies spilling out. The twisted wreckage. I was out-outside, on walkway. Thought to force us down by jamming steering vanes. Good plan. But… I saw. They can’t be allowed to do that again….”
Hamilton looked around at the pounding engines, then back down into his friend’s eyes, where the light was going out. Precious time was slipping away. They had to act. But noble Arkwright was preoccupied with his dying comrade.
He tried pulling the man to his feet, but it was a hopeless spectacle, made worse by the pitching deck. The man called Prichard gave a last cry: “Get to the personal canopies!” Then he went limp and stayed that way, sliding out of Hamilton’s grasp.
Jonny had followed these proceedings as best he could. The ship was doomed, apparently. That made reaching the bridge a futile endeavor. This airship was going to crash, and everyone aboard was going to die.
Unless… personal canopies?
He stumbled and grabbed Hamilton’s arm. The captain wore a stunned look on his handsome face. “Archer!” he yelled over the bedlam of straining machinery. “Your ship is done! We need to get out of here!”
“I’m not leaving!” It had the sound of implacable statement, of mortal declaration.
Jonny saw he was up against military honor now. By tradition, captains had strangely intimate relations with their vessels. It would be no different for the captain of an aircraft. Hamilton wrenched loose from Jonny’s grip and raced toward a ladderway at the far end of the steamy engine room, which was now beginning to fill with acrid smoke as well.
Staggering after him, Jonny kicked aside the bloody knife that had ended the chief’s life. Jonny had been halfway surprised the man was actually on board. He’d almost thought him a figment of Hamilton’s imagination, a fairy tale to keep Jonny’s spirits up, and perhaps his own.
“Archer!” Jonny yelled again. “Arkwright! Hamilton, dammit!” He caught up once more. The captain had reached the foot of the steep set of stairs. Before he could start up, a hatch clanged open at the top.
“Wot in Christ’s name goes on down thah?” an Irish brogue called down.
Brixton was surely up on the bridge too, Jonny figured. That left just the big Mexican unaccounted for, what with the driver throttled to death down there.
In a flash Hamilton brought the rifle to bear, aiming straight up, and squeezed the trigger. A hail of gunfire erupted, the bullets rattling crazily. The Irishman cried out, and the hatch slammed shut at the top of the steps.
Jonny had seen repeaters in use before. They were decidedly unnerving weapons, spraying potential death at a dismaying rate. It couldn’t be a wise idea firing such a thing off inside a balloon, though, could it? Not that it mattered much under these circ
umstances, he thought grimly as the ship continued to list.
He had to make Hamilton see. Once more he lunged for the captain, seized his arm. “We have to make our escape! Damn you, this isn’t my ship. I don’t want to die on it!”
Hamilton appeared ready to go bounding up the ladderway in a suicidal attempt to gain the bridge. But Jonny’s words penetrated. They were selfish words but honest ones. Maybe they appealed to the man’s code of honor. Perhaps there was some statute in military law about not dragging civilians down to their deaths if it could be helped.
“Yes,” Hamilton said, momentarily dazed. Then his eyes focused. “Yes,” he said more decisively. “The ship is doomed. That is correct. Chief Prichard urged us to the personal canopies. We shall obey that good man’s final order. Come!”
With a wrench he tore himself away from the stairs. They went down a side passage in the engine room, which was murky with smoke now. Jonny had no clue what a personal canopy might be, but his mind had fastened onto the words as the only possibility of salvation.
The passageway terminated in a small antechamber. There were lockers, one of which Hamilton yanked open. Jonny saw a door in the opposite wall, with a porthole in it. Beyond, to his alarm, was the nighttime sky. That sky was tumbling. There was so much empty space, extending toward a black horizon. Vertigo such as he had never known seized his skull and seemed to try to twist it off his neck bone.
“Put this on.” Hamilton shoved a canvas bundle at him. Jonny stared dumbly, not letting go of his shotgun.
“Put? On?”
Hamilton had donned an inexplicable contraption of his own, something with many buckles and straps, and the bundle on his back like a knapsack. “Fit it on like I’m wearing. Do it, man! If you want to escape.”
“Escape… how, exactly?” Jonny heard himself ask in a small, strained voice.
Hamilton looked past him to the porthole in the door that apparently opened onto nothing but the air outside. The fear Jonny had felt earlier was like nothing now, a mere passing whim of anxiety. “We’re almost out of time,” Hamilton said.
Smoke was coming down the passage from the room with the engines; so, Jonny saw with suddenly widening eyes, was a big muscle-bound figure. He came looming out of the smudgy mist. It was Brixton’s Mexican goon. Maybe he’d been sent after them. Maybe he had thoughts of escape himself.
Either way, he was rushing toward the antechamber, almost upon it, big hands extended like claws. Without a clear thought, Jonny turned the short-barreled firearm toward him and pulled one of its two triggers. The kick knocked him back against the door. For a sickening instant, he thought it would give way and spill him out into the night.
Gunpowder burned his nostrils. The smoke stung his eyes, for which he was grateful. It meant he didn’t have to see the man he had just shot. Shot. Surely… killed, for the power of this weapon was indeed awful.
Still, he gripped the shotgun with white-knuckled fingers. He could, it seemed, do nothing else at the present. Certainly he couldn’t buckle himself into a foolish device such as Hamilton was currently wearing. The captain would have to leave him behind. He resigned himself to this fact.
Hamilton reached past Jonny and undogged the hatch. Night wind tore inside. Hamilton dropped the rifle, stepped close, wrapped his arms around Jonny in a fearsome embrace, and together they dived out through the open portal, into the madness of empty, reeling space.
Jonny saw the stars whirl. He stood on nothing. He fell with Hamilton. Blackness came up faster than the vast ground spread beneath them, and he was abruptly, mercifully unconscious.
HE’D HAD dreams of falling. Nightmares. They were common, apparently, as if dreams came in categories, like fears, like desires. If one person was deathly afraid of snakes, another would be as well. If there was one male who longed for sexual congress with other males, some other man would share that fancy. Thank the Lord for that.
Jonny Callahan would never be afraid of the falling dream again. He had now lived it. He had fallen out of the sky, plunging like a shooting star. And yet he had survived the experience. It was miraculous.
There was ground under him. Sweet, solid earth. Never before had he so appreciated its materiality, the staunch firmness of the world’s surface on which he’d blithely walked all his life. He wanted to kiss that earth, the grass and soil and stone on which he lay.
Canvas flapped on the ground around him. The wind would get underneath it and move it randomly. Spread out, it was like the shed skin of some massive exotic animal. Buckles clinked. Hamilton had freed himself from the elaborate harness. Yes, they had dropped. They had landed, somehow unharmed. Hamilton had unbuckled and unstrapped himself. He had—
Gone. Where?
Jonny realized he was in shock. A life in crime had put him in desperate situations before, and he’d known fears and their aftermaths. This of course was a serious jolt. He had literally just fallen from the sky. And had passed out on the way down. But he’d come around. His faculties were returning. Where the hell had Hamilton gone to? Jonny sat up.
This was a field or some tract of scrub. There were no light sources nearby. The heavens were bright with stars, but that was hardly the same as having a lantern at hand. Jonny squinted, turning to look every which way.
Then he saw the figure, and he knew it was Hamilton, as though they were already longtime acquaintances and Jonny could recognize his stance, the angle of his jaw, even from a distance. Hamilton stood some ten yards off, slightly silvered in the star- and moonlight. At some point far beyond him, a lone spot of brightness shone. It seemed to be set upon a hill, though how far off Jonny couldn’t tell. It was an orange light, not static but moving, roiling. It was fire. Hamilton looked toward it in the nebulous distance.
It was his ship, Jonny realized. His downed and burning and utterly destroyed craft. What was its name? Yes, the Indomitable. Jonny grunted softly at the irony of the name.
But he wouldn’t point this out to the man. He recognized what a terrible blow this must be for Hamilton. Making to stand up, he realized he was still clutching the shotgun. It took an effort to unclench his hands, to lay the instrument on the ground. A faint aroma of gunpowder still irritated his nasal cavities.
Tonight he had shot a man, the large Mexican. Jonny had seen death before, true, and he had grown somewhat inured to the sight of the dead. But he had never before been the cause of someone’s demise. He’d never before been a… killer. It was a profound distinction from his previous conception of himself. This was the kind of event that forever altered one’s own sense of oneself. This, surely, would always be with him. Would he ever be able to see himself in a mirror without some tendril of this deed worming inside his brain, subtly changing the aspect of the man in the looking glass?
He looked again to the ship burning in the distance. Brixton had been aboard. So had the Irishman. Both dead. And if Jonny hadn’t blasted that Mexican fellow, he would have died anyway along with his comrades, part of that flaming rubble on the hillside. All Jonny had done was assure that he and Hamilton could make their escape. It was an act more heroic than murderous. Wasn’t it?
Christ, he could use some absinthe right about now. He groped for his flask of bourbon, but he’d lost it somewhere.
Wide-open terrain surrounded him. Only now did he begin to understand its extent. This wasn’t some farmer’s field. This was wilderness, uncultivated, raw. That damned ship might have traveled—well, who knew how far? Dozens of miles. Hundreds, maybe. He had fallen asleep in his little cabin, woken only by the artillery blasts. What had that dying engineering chief said was the target? A railroad. A troop train. It was just the sort of military thing the Colonial Underground would go after. If the Underground were real and functional. If the Underground could ever get its hands on, say, a Crimson Talon class Brit airship fully loaded with cannon shells.
Goddamn you, Brixton, he thought.
After a time Hamilton turned away from the wreckage and walked back toward Jo
nny. What was to become of the two of them now? Certainly Jonny couldn’t count on their alliance still being in effect. That had gone down with the ship, as it were.
Jonny hesitated a moment, then stooped and snatched up the shotgun. He slung it over his shoulder. Its weight was more of a comfort than he wanted it to be.
“Two things, Archer.”
“My name’s not Archer.” Hamilton’s voice was toneless. His features were solemn.
“Yeah. But my earlier observation stands. You might need an alias. You never know.”
“You never know,” Hamilton repeated hollowly.
“Two things,” Jonny started again. “First, I’m sorry for what happened to your ship. Second, thank you for rescuing me. I still don’t know what a personal canopy is, and I might never want to know it. But I’m sure if you hadn’t been there to operate the thing, I’d be dead now.”
Hamilton had halted a few feet away. He’d left the repeater on board, but Jonny recalled he had a couple of pistols in his pockets. The bloody handprint remained a stark, disturbing mark on the front of his uniform.
When Hamilton said nothing, Jonny asked, “Do you have any idea where we are?”
The captain’s eyes flicked skyward. “We’ve come north. A considerable distance. I should think this is… Illinois.”
“What?” It sounded ludicrous, impossible. They had left New Orleans at night. It was still nighttime. Crossing so much territory in so short a time was a mind-boggling proposition. He thought of the days and days of cadging rides in electricars to come down from New York.
“You don’t know how swift she is. She was.” Hamilton smiled wistfully, as though remembering the virtues of a dead friend.
In his mind that probably wasn’t far from how he truly felt, Jonny imagined. Still—Illinois? He’d never been there. What was it like? What was its biggest city? Where was the nearest town from here? His mind latched on to these questions, seeking anything tangible. Illinois, after all, was better than a nameless unlit wilderness.
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