“We cannot steal a boat unnoticed?” Alain asked.
“No. Too much noise, and the lookouts could easily see us.”
“How will we do all these things? What is the plan?”
“The plan?” Mari hesitated. “We don’t really have a plan. We’ll have to improvise.”
“Improvise?”
“That means making things up as you go along,” Mari explained.
“But you told me earlier today that we need to have a plan before we begin anything complicated,” Alain objected.
“Yes, I did, but— Fine. Our plan is to improvise.”
“But you said that means not having a plan.”
Mari glared at him. “If our plan is to improvise, then that means our plan is to not have a plan. Can we get on with it now?”
With a slightly baffled expression, Alain nodded in agreement.
Mari readied her weapon, walked the rest of the way to the captain’s door and knocked the same way the guard had before. Hearing a muffled order to enter, Mari opened the door and pointed her weapon at the Senior Mechanic in one smooth motion. “Hi, Captain. I decided to come back.” The Senior Mechanic made an abortive motion toward one side of her desk, halting when Mari cocked her rifle. “Go ahead and go for your pistol. I’d love an excuse to put a bullet in you.”
Alain came in after Mari, closing the door and then going directly to their packs while the captain stared at them with glittering hostility. “The packs have not been opened,” he told Mari. Next to one of them he found his Mage knife, and concealed that under his coat once more, grateful to have something other than the long Mechanic weapon.
Mari smiled at the captain. “Are there orders from Palandur that even you can’t look inside my pack? I wonder what Guild headquarters thinks I’ve got in there? The truth? That seems to be what they’re most scared of. It doesn’t matter, though. People will learn the truth no matter what the Guild does.”
“What doesn’t matter is whatever you try to do,” the woman spat. “You’ll die a traitor’s death.”
“I don’t think so,” Mari stated in a soft voice that nonetheless carried something menacing that made Alain turn to stare her. “And if I do, I consider being a traitor to the likes of you to be an honor. Though I do appreciate your confirming that the Guild intended seeing me dead after getting whatever information it could from me. Turn around.”
The Senior Mechanic shook head slowly. “No. You’ll have to kill me to my face, and I know you don’t have the courage to do that.”
Mari laughed softly. “You’re not nearly as ugly as the dragons I’ve faced, honored Senior Mechanic. Well, maybe you are as ugly as the troll, but did it ever occur to you that I’m not interested in killing people if I don’t have to?” She stepped closer to the desk, nerved herself, then quickly swung the butt of her rifle so it struck the woman on the temple. The captain fell sideways, sprawling on the deck. “Make sure she’s out,” Mari asked Alain, suppressing a sick feeling at having clubbed another person unconscious.
Alain checked, then nodded. “Shall we tie her up?”
“Yeah.” Mari looked around. “We’re on a ship. Why can’t I see any rope?”
“How about this?” Alain asked. “It is slick and not too thick, but it looks like rope.”
“That’ll do.” Mari picked up the intercom wire and yanked. It didn’t give, so Mari stuck her rifle barrel behind it and twisted until the wire broke with a snapping noise. Then she handed the free length to Alain. “It’s actually wire. Make sure it’s not too tight.”
“Wire? You mean metal? But it bends like stiff rope and feels like cloth?”
“Yeah. The cloth is insulation, and no, I don’t have time to explain what insulation is. Do you remember how to tie knots?”
“Not very well,” Alain admitted.
Mari grabbed the wire from him, then pulled the captain’s wrists behind her back and tied the wire around them, making sure the wire was over the sleeves of the captain’s jacket so it wouldn’t cut off the blood to her hands. The other end of the wire was still attached firmly to the wall. She then pulled open drawers in the captain’s bureau, using a spare shirt to tie the captain’s legs together. Mari stuffed a handkerchief she found into the captain’s mouth as a gag. “That’s the best we can do. Let’s— Wait. One more thing.”
Yanking open the captain’s desk drawers, Mari found a pistol. “Same size cartridges as mine,” she explained to Alain, getting a blank look in exchange. Mari grabbed the entire box of cartridges and stuffed it in a pocket of the jacket she was wearing. Given what the Mechanics Guild charged for a single round of ammunition, she might just as well have pocketed a sack full of gold.
“Now, we need to find this ship’s far-talker. It’ll be somewhere up high.” Mari led the way out into the passageway, their movements a little harder now with the big packs on, then out onto an open upper deck area where the sea breeze gusted between parts of the metal ship’s superstructure. The sun had completely set, leaving the upper parts of the ship in darkness interrupted only by the stars above and the navigation lights on the mast of the ship. There was no sign of the passenger ship Sun Runner, which had apparently been set free to continue its interrupted voyage while the Mechanic ship turned back toward Landfall.
Another Mechanic came by, alone, and Mari waylaid him. “How do I get to the far-talker from here?”
The Mechanic provided the directions, then peered at Mari. “Are you new on board? Got a boyfriend?”
“Yes and yes,” Mari replied.
“Every girl on this ship is taken,” the other Mechanic grumbled good-naturedly, then headed off about his business.
Mari watched him go, then sighed with relief. “I didn’t want to have to club down another Mechanic. Come on.” The directions they had been given lay along the outside of the ship’s superstructure, so they had to move carefully with only starlight to mark their path. It wasn’t very far, but Mari was getting increasingly nervous by the time they reached the hatch with a sign identifying it as the place where the ship’s long-distance far-talker was kept. The longer she and Alain had to spend taking out the far-talker and the propulsion plant, the greater the chance of their being discovered or alarms being sounded. Mari rapped a brisk knock on the hatch, opened it without waiting for a reply, and quickly entered the far-talker room.
As she had expected, the far-talker was being watched at this hour by an apprentice. Mari gritted her teeth, then brought her rifle to bear on the girl. “Apprentice, I strongly recommend that you don’t move or make any noise while my friend here ties you up.” The girl sat frozen with fear while Alain used more wires to bind her.
Mari laid down her weapon and shut off the main power switch to the far-talker, then started pulling open access panels. Then she just stared at the rows of vacuum tubes gleaming in their sockets, and the ranks of circuit boards with their brightly-banded resistors. “I can’t do it,” she whispered to Alain.
“Do what?” he asked, coming close.
“Break this stuff. Stars above, Alain, I’ve spent my life learning how to fix this gear, how to treat it with respect and keep it working. Do you know how much artistry goes into those tubes and circuit boards? They’re all hand-made. It’s… it’s beautiful.”