After all, there was nothing but their skill, hands, and trust in each other between touching the heavens and being crushed by the earth.
Hink readjusted his gear and knew his crew was doing the same. Then he set his feet in the straps bolted to the floor in front of the helm. He didn’t intend to take her out hot. No, he’d rather the Swift slip up behind the old steamer, and follow in the Black Sledge’s wake.
Caution was half of what kept a glimman alive.
The other half was plain foolhardy luck.
The crew of the Swift had both, ace-high.
Molly Gregor pushed her goggles over her eyes and strode off to the boilers, shutting the blast door behind her.
Hink waited for the bell to ring, indicating that the Swift was steamed and ready to burn sky.
The cord tugged and the bell in the ceiling frame rattled once. The Swift was powered to go.
Guffin, Seldom, and Lum all pushed their feet into floor braces. Hink studied the eastern sky, getting a visual on the Black Sledge.
There she was, a bulk against the intermittent clouds, coming in and out of sight like a barge slipping through fog down a white river.
“All right, then,” Hink said, his words muddled by his breathing gear. “Let’s go see what plunder the sky has for us today.”
He signaled Seldom to pull anchor, and the Irishman set to releasing the catch and cranking up the line.
Captain Hink let out the throttle. Like a living thing, the Swift came awake beneath his feet. He could feel her shudder, feel her lift to the wind, feel her strain to go higher, faster. Built to take the air, the Swift pumped up quick.
“Above her,” Hink said.
Guffin adjusted the trim and Hink steered her, up and up through the white and gray wall of clouds, until he was well behind the Black Sledge, the shadow of his ship pushed behind him by the western setting sun.
The winds were picking up, that squall on the northern horizon headed their way, but not before cooling off between the teeth of the range. If it brought rain or freeze, it’d take as much fuel as they had on hand to fight their way down to a survivable landing.
They were running out of time to get answers.
“Bring her up close,” Hink said. He hit the toggle for the bell back in the boiler room, giving Molly the go-ahead to bail it in. “We’ll swing by and have a look at where she’s lashing for the night.”
They maneuvered the Swift up close and tight to the Black Sledge, bucking riptide winds.
It was hard to get a bead on her with the roil of clouds, but when she veered to the southeast, Hink was right on her trail.
“She’s hopping the peaks,” Hink said as the big blower chugged along the ridge but didn’t fly over. Didn’t make sense. If she was trying to move out of the way of the storm, all she needed was a place to hold up—a difficult proposition with a ship her size—or land. And either of those options would be found at lower elevations.
Why would she ride the ridge?
A flash of yellow bloomed out the side of the Black Sledge and swept across the peaks below them. Then another flash, and another, like beams of sunlight bursting through the clouds.
Mirrors. Goddamn it all, she had mirrors.
She wasn’t hopping the peaks, she was scraping the sky and hills with light. Looking for a flash, looking for a reflection off something metal.
Like, say, a tin ship.
“Back and up!” Hink ordered.
Guffin and Seldom scrambled to work the controls, and the Swift jumped to obey. But it was too late. A wide swath of light, bright and hot as summer off a river, swept across the clouds they’d been holding to, and near as much blinded Hink, even through his goggles.
“Son of a mule!” he swore.
Run or fight? The world seemed to pause for a second, to slip away and slow as he thought through the possibilities, spinning through his mind.
The Sledge outgunned them, outpowered them. It would be a dead man’s gamble to take her on. The Swift could outrun her, but running wouldn’t answer his questions. Why was Alabaster Saint suddenly going so out of his way to kill him? Who was working for the general, and how deep into the western glim trade had Alabaster entrenched himself?
Answers to all of that might be a thing of national security. There’d been talks of uprisings since the war. There’d been talks of the west, with her mountains and glim defecting from the east with her money and matics. Talks the president was keenly interested in getting to the bottom of.
And on most all of those rumors, Hink had heard General Alabaster Saint’s name traded, hand to hand, like coin of the realm. Whatever plans were being made out here in the west, he was fair certain the Saint was a part of them.
“Hellfire,” Hink swore, having made up his mind before the mirror’s light had reached the tail fin. “Take her on!”
They dove for the Black Sledge, pounding sky to beat the devil.
The Black Sledge angled up, catching a hard tailwind. Not so much making a run for it as getting up and into more maneuverable sky to avoid being rammed into the ragged cliffs.
“Watch her guns,” Hink said. “Seldom, ready the hook and torch.”
Guffin pulled his breathing gear off his mouth. “We’re boarding her?” He didn’t sound so much worried as maybe a little too excited about the prospect of dangling feet in thin air.
“We’re taking her down,” Hink said.
The racket of the fans pushing the Swift drowned out anything else. Hink fought the controls, pushed by crosswinds and updrafts as he gave her full throttle to ram that black bag of air.
Their only chance was speed.
Good thing speed was what the Swift had by the bucketloads.
The ship’s frame screeched under the strain of the dive, her tin bones singing out like a hundred wet fingers over fine crystal.
The ship vibrated with the sound of it, the song of it. A rise of pride, of power, of fearless joy swelled Hink’s chest. He ripped off his breathing gear and let out a whoop and holler. Mr. Lum’s deep laughter rolled through the cabin.
The Black Sledge yawed to the side, slinging around hard to show the guns that prickled a line down the length of her.
“Ready, Mr. Seldom?” Hink yelled.
“Aye, Captain!” The Irishman set a hook from his belt to the mid-bar above his head, stomped his feet into the floor belts, then opened the starboard rear door.
The gust of wind that rattled the inside of the ship set her to shaking and would have stirred up anything not tied down, but Hink, Guffin, and Lum were hooked tight to the framework by belts at their waist and braces over their boots.
The blast of a cannon pounded the air like a giant clapping the Swift between his hands. The port rear fan sputtered before picking up to plumb again.
Hink kept the throttle full open. The window filled with the Black Sledge. He could see every stitch and rivet on the big old barge.
The Swift screamed out her killing song as the engine pumped thunder and power into her bones. The repercussions of another cannon shot—this one wide—cracked through the air.
Closer. So close, Hink could jump the door and land on the Black Sledge’s wing, if he wanted.
“Now!” he yelled to Mr. Seldom. But even as the word left his lips, Mr. Seldom had already let loose the flaming hook.
Guffin got himself settled in to see how many swear words he could fit in a breath as he, Hink, and Lum fought the controls to pull the Swift up out of her suicide dive.