by Sean Kennedy
“You know him personally?” Ezra asked, interested in spite of himself.
The doctor shook his head. “Oh, I met him. Just the once. He appeared on my doorstep with a load of medical supplies. We were in the middle of a flu epidemic. The larger towns were giving us the run-around in getting us the medicine we needed.”
“Let me guess,” Ezra said. “They thought it was more important to keep the meds in case the flu spread to the larger towns?”
Caves nodded. “The provinces aren’t worth much to them.”
“I don’t agree with any of what they’re doing—” Ezra began to say.
“You are if you take Icarus in,” Caves said, purely and simply. “You’re just aiding and abetting.”
“I sympathize, Doc.” Ezra wanted the old man to believe him. He wasn’t used to being seen as a villain. “But like I said, I have my reasons.”
Caves rinsed a cloth and delicately sponged at Icarus’s wound again. “If your reason is money, it’s no reason at all.”
Ezra was about to tell him to mind his own damn business when Icarus stirred awake.
“Just let him take me, Doctor.”
“No,” Cave said firmly.
“Don’t get yourself hurt on account of me,” Icarus said hoarsely.
“What?” Ezra exploded. “You really think I’d injure an old man?”
“I don’t know what you’d do,” Icarus said, trying to sit up.
“He won’t hurt me,” Caves said, pushing him back down.
“How do you know?” Ezra demanded, really wanting to know how Caves could believe that when he didn’t know him from a bar of soap.
“You haven’t the face for it, son.” Caves reached for a blanket to cover his patient. “Get some rest, Icarus. It’s the best thing for you at the moment.”
“He’s coming with me,” Ezra reminded him.
“No, he’s not.”
Anger roared through Ezra, and he drew out his firearm. It was almost like he was separated from himself, and watching a stranger who looked like him embark on this desperate action. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
“You won’t,” Caves repeated, as though he was used to have a gun pulled on him every day.
“Kneebone,” Icarus said. “I’ll come with you.”
He slowly slid himself off the bed, and stood on unsteady feet. Caves went to help him, but Icarus pulled away. “Thank you, Doctor, for all your help, but it’s best you stay out of this.”
Caves glowered and looked back at Ezra. “What kind of man are you?”
Still keeping his gun trained on the doctor, Ezra reached into his pocket and threw a handful of bills onto the bed Icarus had just vacated. “One who pays his debts.”
Icarus made his way to Ezra’s side and stumbled. Ezra reached out to catch him, and Caves’s left hand quickly darted into the pocket of his trousers. Before the old man could even aim his gun properly, Ezra fired off a shot. Caves watched in terror as the bullet struck his gun and sent it flying from his hand.
“I could have killed you,” Ezra told him matter-of-factly. “But I didn’t. That’s the kind of man I am.”
“You’re still choosing money over justice.” Caves moved back to his desk, and practically fell back into his chair. His knees, weak from the surprise of Ezra’s quick shooting, couldn’t have supported him for much longer.
“Maybe that’s the kind of man I am too,” Ezra said. He shot Icarus a brief glance to check he was all right, and then moved behind Caves’s desk. “Hate to do this to you, Doc. But I can’t risk you setting someone after us.”
“What are you doing?” Caves demanded.
His eyes widened as Ezra unrolled a set of bandages and began using them as ropes to tie the man’s wrists and ankles to the arms and legs of his chair.
“Is that necessary?” Icarus asked.
“Wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think so,” Ezra said, knotting the bandages in place.
“He’s an old man.”
“An old man who tried to shoot me!”
“You pulled the gun on him first!”
“I’m not arguing with you about this,” Ezra said coolly.
“Oh? Because I’m your prisoner?” Icarus said mockingly.
“Damn straight.”
Icarus turned on his heel and walked out of the doctor’s office.
Ezra watched him wide-eyed, and then looked back at Caves—the man wasn’t fully secured, but he couldn’t risk losing Icarus.
Caves looked like he was enjoying himself now.
“He’s going to make your job tougher for you.”
You have no idea, Ezra thought, but said nothing. He almost admired the gumption of Icarus—but what else could he expect from a man who took on the government single-handedly, and took to the skies without the safety of a ship as well?
He stuck a rolled bandage into the doctor’s mouth to act as a gag. “Sorry,” he said, and he meant it. It was never a good thing to take another man’s dignity away from him. Especially when that man dedicated his life to helping others.
The doctor spluttered in a mixture of embarrassment and rage. Looking into his eyes, Ezra could hear the man’s voice speaking within his mind: That’s what you’re doing to Icarus, though, isn’t it, Bounty Hunter?
“Good day, sir,” Ezra said, and then ran out the door after Icarus, pretending that he didn’t hear the doctor’s muffled cries behind him.
“YOU should see them, Bart,” Jazz said. Her feet were propped up on the console, and Icarus’s wings were still on her lap. She had now extended the wings out, and they almost took up the whole width of the cockpit. “I could never have made them.”
“Because you think larger than life,” came Lady Bart’s cool, collected voice through the speakers. “Your visions are grand, my darling. Icarus’s wings are their own beauty, but your ships will surpass all others in the sky.”
Jazz grinned. “Stop talking me up. And besides, it isn’t just me. They’re as much Ezra’s ships, if not more.”
“Someone has to talk you up. Ezra surely isn’t at the moment.”
“He has his moments,” Jazz told her.
“I know he does,” Bart replied. “But there aren’t many at the moment.”
“He defended me to Harding.”
“He would also tell Harding the sky was green if it would piss him off.”
“That’s no way for a lady to talk,” Jazz mockingly reprimanded her.
Bart’s laugh echoed tinnily throughout the cockpit. “I’m on my own time now, my dear. Fuck all the social graces.”
The cockpit began to shake, and it was in no way due to Bart’s mirth. Jazz clutched onto the wings so they wouldn’t fall onto the floor, and slammed her feet back on the ground so she could give herself leverage to peer out of the window as far as she could.
Three other airships were directly flanking the Lilliput as they came in to land. Even worse, one of them was Harding’s dirigible—the Bubulcus.
“The bastard got it fixed,” Jazz breathed unhappily.
“What’s happening there?” Bart asked, sounding slightly panicked.
“Can’t talk right now, my love. I’ll call you later.” Without waiting for a response, Jazz disconnected their signal. She quickly drew the wings back into their resting position and stashed the harness under Ezra’s side of the console before hitting the console again.
“Kneebone, you hear me? We have trouble!”
THE front door to the doctor’s house was already lying open by the time Ezra reached the living room. He cursed vehemently and hoped that Icarus wasn’t drawing attention to himself outside. One elderly doctor with a shine to the idea of the winged hero was easy to take care of, but a whole town, even one as small as Settler’s Pass? Ezra would have no chance.
He couldn’t even yell out his name. “Icarus” would immediately turn heads, and Icarus had made it more than clear that Ezra had no right to be acquainted with his real name.
Out on the st
reet, Ezra looked around wildly. The streets were pretty much deserted, bar one woman taking a pile of washing back inside her house. He wondered if the dusty wind made them grimy again as soon as they were hung out.
There was the sound of a sharp whistle, and Ezra turned in its direction to see Icarus sitting back off the road, under the shade of a large oak tree. Ezra got to his side in record time, his breath sounding as strained as he felt.
“I told you I’d come with you,” Icarus said unhappily.
Ezra nodded.
“You didn’t have to go and tie the doctor up. He’s eighty if he’s a day.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Ezra said, “I didn’t tie him up too tightly.”
Icarus shook his head. “What you did in there was abominable.”
“That’s a tad much, don’t you think?”
“Do you even know what you’re doing?” Icarus demanded.
Ezra thought for a long, hard, moment, and admitted, “No. I haven’t thought this through much at all.”
Icarus seemed to soften against him. “Look, I—”
Ezra’s wrist gear squawked into life. “Kneebone, you hear me? We have trouble!”
Icarus and Ezra stared at each other, both reflecting a here-we-go-again look of shared misery.
“Talk to me, Jazz,” Ezra said into his wrist.
“You can’t hear it?” Jazz came back incredulously.
He had been distracted by Icarus, but now that she said it, he recognized that the atmosphere in the small town had changed. There was also an undercurrent of noise that hadn’t been there before—a steady hum of engines kept in neutral—
—and now a steady procession of men, fully armed, spreading their way throughout the streets of Settler’s Pass. Looking for one thing, Ezra was sure.
“Jazz,” Ezra said softly. “Now I have trouble.”
He could hear her sigh even above the static of their comm signal. “I have the coordinates from your wrist gear. You stay there; I’m coming to you.”
Ezra didn’t bother with responding; it came from years of working with Jazz. They knew what had to be said and when it could be said. Further chatter on the waves would only serve to give away his position if somebody was listening in.
“I don’t suppose you have a spare gun?” Icarus asked.
Ezra shook his head.
“You probably wouldn’t give me one anyway.”
Ezra leaned down and helped Icarus to his feet. “You’d be surprised.”
“You thought I had run for my life from Caves’s office.”
“But you hadn’t.”
“Maybe it’s all part of my master plan,” Icarus said.
Ezra began herding them into the leeway of a storage barn, hoping that would give them enough cover before Jazz showed up to save them. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
Ezra peered around to see where their would-be captors were in relation to them. “Because I think you know you’re better off with me than taking your chances with them.”
Icarus didn’t reply; maybe Ezra had a point in that after all.
“Don’t get all emotional on me,” Ezra dismissed him. “I’m not that sensitive.”
“I don’t know,” Icarus said ponderingly. “Maybe Dr. Caves was right. There’s something different about you.”
“Save it for the testimonial,” Ezra replied. “We have to get out of here first.”
Icarus inched around him to peer out into the street. “There’s six of them.”
“Nine,” Ezra corrected him. “The others must have moved down another alleyway.”
“You think Jazz will get to us in time?”
“If anybody could, it will be Jazz,” Ezra said confidently.
He didn’t voice the opinion that it might be too close, even for Jazz.
“Maybe we should make for that other alley,” Icarus told him. “There’s more places to hide.”
Ezra shook his head. “They would shoot us down as soon as they saw us. Best to wait for Jazz.”
Icarus shrugged. “You’re the man with the gun.”
That rankled Ezra. “I’m trying to save your life!”
Icarus laughed. “Considering what you have in store for me afterwards, I can’t help but wonder if I’d be better off dead.”
The scrape of an approaching footfall made them both fall silent and watch from their vantage point as one of their possible captors crossed by the mouth of the alley. He peered in; Ezra and Icarus pressed back against the doorframe they were hiding in. A few interminable seconds passed, and so did the man after his most cursory of look-overs.
“It’s lucky they’re not as thorough as you,” Icarus observed.
“Don’t count them out yet,” Ezra warned him.
The ground beneath them rumbled, and Ezra closed his eyes briefly in thanks as Jazz expertly flew the Lilliput down the main street of Settler’s Pass and straight to their hideyhole. The engines kicked up a dust cloud that blew directly into their faces, and Ezra found himself spitting out sand in a vain attempt to clear his throat.
“Go on!” he waved to Icarus with the gun. “You first!”
Icarus looked as if he was going to object, but then he nodded and turned his back on Ezra.
The Lilliput appeared above his head, and he had to brace himself against the onslaught of kickback from the engines. The cockpit door opened, and Jazz maneuvered the ship as close to the ground as she could without actually landing. Icarus grabbed the side of the door to help himself up, his other hand holding his side. The stitches must have been pulling, and Ezra hoped they wouldn’t break. Dr. Caves might not be so accommodating with the hospitality if they had to return to him.
Just as Icarus was about to jump up into the Lilliput, three of the men appeared, having been alerted by the appearance of the ship. There were no yells to stop nor any warnings. They fired immediately, and one aimed for the window near the pilot’s seat. Jazz must have instinctively jerked, for the Lilliput reared back, which caused Icarus to lose his grip, and he fell into the dirt. He struggled to get back up, his hand still on his side, and Ezra stepped out from behind the shelter of his barrel and began firing madly at their attackers.
He was gratified that one of them fell to the ground in a spray of blood; he never liked killing, or even wounding, but when it came down to choosing between your life or theirs, what else could you do? And seeing Icarus sprawled in the dust, directly in the firing line… it brought out a protective streak in him that he felt might have nothing to do with money.
Exactly what, he didn’t have time to consider.
The steady barrage of fire from his pistol made the other two men draw back. Ezra knew the gunfire would bring the others soon enough, and skidded on his knees to Icarus’s side and began helping him up.
“You okay?” he yelled over the noise.
Icarus nodded.
They both looked up to see the Lilliput’s underbelly coming back toward the ground.
“Last call for boarding,” Ezra said.
“You’re not getting any argument from me,” Icarus wheezed. “I want to get the hell out of Settler’s Pass.”
“You and me both,” Ezra said, before pain lanced through his leg. He looked down to see blood blossoming through the material on his thigh. He staggered and fell to the ground. The noise around him faded out, and he felt as if he were disconnected from his own body. He was aware that he had to get back to his feet, and get him and Icarus back on the Lilliput, but he couldn’t get back up. He saw Icarus looking over him worriedly. He was saying something, but Ezra couldn’t hear him.
All he knew was that he had failed. He had told Icarus that despite everything, he wouldn’t let him fall into the hands of less savory bounty hunters, but it wasn’t likely that they would get out of this together. If Icarus had any sense, he would be jumping on the Lilliput right now and flying away with Jazz. But he knew enough of the man to know that he wouldn’t leave Ezra bleeding
and wounded on the ground even if it cost him his own freedom.
Even though he couldn’t hear himself, he told Icarus, “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t know if Icarus replied. The blessed blackness claimed him.
WHEN the bullet had cracked the window, Jazz had ducked and accidentally pulled back on the ship’s controls. With the sensors, she had seen that Icarus had lost his grip and therefore the possibility of getting onboard. She cursed and swung the ship around to try a second boarding. She could see the men closing in on her friend and his would-be prisoner through the sensors, which were also picking up the other six closing in on their location. Sweat ran into her eye, but she couldn’t even risk wiping it away, as it would interrupt the savage dance her hands were doing over the console, trying to save all of their lives.
She cried out when Ezra went down. She knew he had been shot. She readjusted the sensors, trying to find out if she could put down the Lilliput right there and then. She was prepared to pull out her rifle, jump out of the ship, and start firing herself if she had to. She couldn’t risk using the Lilliput’s own rifles; they were so strong they would rip the buildings of the town apart, and she couldn’t have any innocent civilians’ deaths on her conscience. Better to try and take out their attackers one on one.
Bullets raked across the window again. One actually penetrated the glass this time and disappeared with a metallic thud into the bulkhead. Emergency warnings began blaring out of the sensors.
“No!” Jazz screamed. “Not now!”
The tail of the ship was beginning to drag. The power to the controls was only at sixty percent, and the Lilliput began turning in slow, lazy circles. She was going to ditch right in the town center if she didn’t get away from it.
“Kneebone,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Smoke pouring out of the controls, Jazz had to leave Ezra behind. She could see Icarus kneeling over him in the dust and fury of the ship’s wake, and saw Icarus slump over the prone body as one of the bounty hunters fired upon him.
The Lilliput cleared the buildings of the town and headed out into the desert so it could go down with the least amount of damage to others.