He leaned forward to catch her words. “What’s that?”
“Are you Doc’s son? Duncan MaqqRee?”
He smiled. “I’m afraid so. A word of advice that will do you no good: Some fathers think they can dictate their children’s lives forever. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” she said; her voice was even quieter; he leaned still closer.
Then she opened her mouth and screamed.
Gaby Donohue’s image exploded out at Duncan. He felt something sharp tear at his face. Then pain, worse than any he’d known in twice ten years. He reeled away from it and went off balance. His toppling chair carried him to the floor. “Gods!”
He couldn’t open his eyes. Things tore when he tried to do that. He raised his hands to them, encountered flesh and blood and sharp edges. “Captain!”
No answer. There were distant cries, a faraway roaring that began to grow louder.
Captain Walbert stood alone at the wheel; with all his men assigned to other tasks or left behind in the Monarch Building, he had to fly his ship practically single-handed. But that wasn’t why his back and shoulders were locked with tension. No, that was the fault of Duncan Blackletter, with his unreasonable orders and anger spewing across the talk-box every few beats. It could only be moments before some new offense would issue from the screen—
He was right, after a fashion. He heard a scream from the talk-box behind him and it burst, raining sparks and debris all over his back.
The crewman at the bow gun fired again, trying to put his stream of tracers onto the rotorkite sinking away from the liftship. The rotorkite was a difficult target, in spite of the plume of smoke that was already billowing from its engine compartment.
He heard a shriek beside him, an odd noise to come from the talk-box the old sodder had had installed so the liftship would be “modern.” Then the talk-box exploded. He saw glass and fire rain down through the hatch into the liftship interior.
Fire—
The talk-box in the rotorkite’s cockpit panel burst, raining hot bits of glass and wire all over Noriko. She jerked in surprise. The rotorkite veered, but she kept control, getting far enough away that the liftship’s guns would no longer pose a threat to her.
She looked back at Storm Cloud and saw it. A glow, golden-yellow, shone through the liftship’s skin toward the bow, illuminating the ship’s metal skeleton from within. The skin there began to char black.
Doc paused on the catwalk running down the center of the Storm Cloud’s interior. He took his bearings. Directly above, crewmen descended toward him along access ladders, their feet in felt boots. Below, blue-uniformed officers ascended toward him. None would shoot at him, nor he at them, with giant envelopes of hydrogen surrounding them. Forty feet below was the access shaft down to the liftship’s gondola.
Then he saw fire blossom above, toward the bow.
He leaped over the catwalk rail and dropped past the men below, catching one crossbeam twenty feet down, stopping his plummet through sheer grace and strength; the impact wrenched his shoulder and he felt the flesh of his arm sear where it came into contact with steel. Then he dropped again, slowed himself by grabbing a beam ten feet above the shaft, and hit the catwalk beside the access shaft. He could already feel the heat from the wave of fire advancing toward him, and the men above were yelling. He swung into the shaft and slid down the length of the metal ladder into the gondola.
Above were the roar of fire and the screams of the men caught in it. His arms trembled from iron poisoning.
He stood in the vehicle’s bomb bay. He saw the hatch leading into a room forward, another leading aft, open doors showing the buildings of Neckerdam below. And Harris Greene, panting, stood in the forward doorway.
“Fancy meeting you here,” said Harris.
“I’ll look aft, you look forward,” Doc said. “Don’t waste time. We’re on fire.”
“Good to see you, too.” Harris went forward.
The third door Doc opened belonged to Duncan.
His withered, ancient son lay bleeding on the floor. Doc saw the ruin of the man’s eyes and winced in sympathy.
For a moment he was awash in memories. Dierdriu smiling at their baby boy as she nursed him. Finding the body of the child Duncan strangled the morning he left home forever. The guardsman of Beldon telling him his wife had been found in the river. The body of Siobhan Damvert with her head twisted around nearly backwards and her eyes staring sightlessly.
Doc tried to harden himself against what had to happen now. And, just as it had been twenty years ago, he could not.
Duncan moved feebly, hearing him. “Captain?”
“No.”
“Desmond.” Duncan shrank away from him, drawing back against the wall of his cabin. “Father. Don’t kill me.”
Doc felt something break in his heart. “I’m sorry, Duncan. Gaols cannot hold you. If you do not die now, someone else will die because of you.” He crossed the cabin, knelt before his boy, and drew his pistol. He saw his hand shake. His head felt light as once more the decision to do what he had to do threatened to overwhelm him.
Duncan brushed his leg against Doc’s.
Doc saw a flare of brightness as lightning leaped between them. He heard the unaimed gun fire in his hand, felt his muscles jerk as the electrical jolt coursed through him.
Then he knew nothing more.
Duncan heard Doc fly across the cabin, hurled by the force of the old devisement. Doc hit the wall with a shuddering impact. Duncan heard him slide to the floor and go still. Smelled the odor of charred flesh rising from him.
Imbecile, Duncan thought. You didn’t think I’d prepared myself after our last meeting? For years I’ve renewed that devisement each morning . . . and finally it has proved worth the effort.
He straightened up, ignoring the pain in his eyes—the hurt and blindness would be gone once he passed some gold to very expensive doctors he knew. He groped around on his tabletop. Now, where did I leave that knife?
The gondola narrowed as Harris continued forward. The passageway passed between a small washroom starboard and a larger radio room port.
The next chamber was some sort of map room with windows to either side. Two long tables were laid out with maps and charts Harris didn’t bother to look at. The hatch forward was open.
Harris stepped through into the control room, the forward end of the gondola. Windows all around provided a panoramic view of Neckerdam and the river immediately ahead. A large, impressively carved wooden wheel, a ship’s wheel, was situated at the very front.
A uniformed man stood there, impassively guiding the airship on its course. He turned a little as Harris entered. He was bearded, looked sober and intelligent.
“Where’s Duncan?” Harris asked.
“Aft,” the captain replied. “Cabin Four.”
“We’re on fire.”
“You think I don’t know?” The man sagged just a little. “I’ll be putting her into the river. I won’t let her fall on the city. You have nothing to fear from me.” He turned away.
Knife in hand, Duncan crawled up his father’s body. Three cuts, he decided. A grimworld smiley-face. One blow each into Doc’s eyes, then a sweet curve across his throat. It would be a charming way to remember the man; a pity he couldn’t photograph the moment. Then, he’d make his way to the pilot room and find out just what was going on—
For the second time, someone entered his cabin without permission. “Captain?” he asked.