Nita surged her way through the city. She wasn’t familiar with Fugtown from ground level. Most humans weren’t. She’d gotten some good looks at it from above, and she’d spent some rather notable time in the warehouse district, but that knowledge was doing her little good when it came to keeping Goose heading in something resembling the right direction.
“We’re staying down. We’re staying on the streets!” Nita scolded as Goose, for the twentieth time, leaped to a wall rather than navigate those pesky corners.
A compromise was found in that Goose was willing to run along the walls, bounding back and forth between them. Nita held tight and ducked low to keep from being bucked off. They were heading for the funicular, which as one might expect was in the busiest, densest part of the city. She wouldn’t be able to avoid causing a stir for much longer, but the fact that she just minutes earlier had drawn the more worrisome of the patrols to a different part of the city would buy her a few minutes. With any luck that was all she’d need.
Goose dropped to the ground and galloped across the courtyard surrounding the funicular. The place was, by Fugtown standards, absolutely packed. Granted, this meant that there were merely a few dozen people milling about, whereas there would be a few hundred in a larger surface city or a few thousand in the biggest cities of Caldera. Goose didn’t bother hopping over or dodging around the people in his way. A lowered head and a hoarse honk sent him plowing through the crowd lined up at the funicular’s boarding platform. She wrestled him to a stop a few strides before he would have smashed into the two technicians scratching their heads at the empty platform. Each of them was the tall, scrawny academic sort of fug person. Prior to Nita’s arrival, their biggest problem was the growing impatience of the crowd. It had driven them to such distraction that they didn’t even notice Nita’s chaotic arrival.
“What’s happened here?” Nita asked, hopping from Goose.
The older of the two technicians spoke with weary impatience, not bothering to look at who had asked.
“Look, I’ve said it a hundred times already, the previous tech crew left the platform a mess and we need to…” He finally turned. “What in the world!”
“I am an engineer. What is the problem?” Nita said.
“You’re a surface person and you’re riding a beast an—”
“And I’ll let it free to run amok in this city if you don’t tell me what’s happened here!” Nita snapped.
The younger technician hissed a warning to his partner. “She’s that crazy Calderan from the Wind Breaker crew. Just do what she says. Who knows what they’ve got planned?”
He nervously turned to her. “A merchant came along and bought out every available slot for an emergency cargo delivery. Terrible waste. There wasn’t nearly enough cargo to fill it. He brought a crew of technicians to do some maintenance to ‘ensure the safety of the cargo.’ They had the right uniforms and credentials, but I’m starting to wonder if they were genuine. When the car left, we found spare parts tossed off to the side. We’ve got the car held at the top while we work it out.”
“Was the merchant dressed in black with what looked like a bird mask on?”
“It wasn’t a bird mask, it was a first-generation filter mask. But yes,” said the older man.
“Where are the parts?” Nita demanded.
“Look, we can’t just let—”
“Let me see the parts now!” she barked, pulling one of the larger wrenches from her belt to slap against her palm.
Goose, obviously unwilling to let loud noises happen without making his own contribution, produced a loud, excited honk as punctuation.
“These are the people who took down Skykeep. Just do what they want until the patrols get here,” the younger fugger urged. “The parts are right there. All of them. See for yourself.”
Nita hurried over to a carefully laid out assortment of nuts, bolts, and mechanisms. There wasn’t much there, but what was there told a very clear story. A scissor-like mechanism with a spring and two round weights was the most immediately worrisome item.
“That’s a speed governor,” she said. “And those look like brake calipers. They’ve disabled the emergency brake, haven’t they?”
“Why does she know how our funicular works…” muttered the older man.
“Because I’m a free-wrench!” she snapped.
Goose honked excitedly and focused one eye on each of the two men.
“Are there any other safety measures?” she asked.
The young man pointed. “The funicular is still controlled by the technicians in the machine tower. And they absolutely will not let an unsafe funicular move.”
The platform rattled, steam hissed, and the cables started to move.
“No. No, no, no. I haven’t received the all clear. They should not be moving,” the older man said.
Nita hopped onto Goose and whistled a command.
He charged through the two technicians and streaked across the courtyard to the base of the machine tower. A few scrabbling leaps later, he crested the top of the tower and perched himself on the thin roof. Nita dismounted and jumped to the catwalk. It took far less time to work out what had happened here than with the pile of spare parts. Two technicians in similar garb to those below were hogtied in the machine room, which was secured with a chain from the outside. A quick twist and bash with her wrench busted the lock and she burst in.
“What happened?” she asked, untying them. “Who did this?”
“Two grunts. They sabotaged the controls,” said one of the fuggers.
Nita turned. The complex control panel looked like it had been worked over with a mallet. The funicular seemed to have been locked into its maximum speed. An indicator displayed its increasing velocity. There wasn’t enough of the mechanics of the control panel intact to make any changes.
“Is there a backup control room?” she asked.
“No.”
“Are there controls at the top of the funicular?”
“Why would we let surface folk control our funicular?”
Nita pointed at the control panel. “For this exact reason!” She looked out the window of the control room and followed the steam pipes to the main equipment shed. “I am going to bring that car to a halt. If Dr. Wash wants it moving, I want it stopped.”
“Who gave you the right to make that call? You’re a surface person!”
“Things are moving too fast to ask permission, and you wouldn’t give it to the likes of me anyway. You’ll thank me when this is over.” She took a few strides toward the door. “Who am I kidding? No you won’t.”
#
“You reckon she’ll be okay down there?” Coop said, pacing on the deck of the ship as Gunner guided it.
“She made it for several days without us. She’ll be fine,” Gunner said.
“But her head ain’t right. You heard her. She don’t even know she’s a Cooper.”
“She’s safe, Coop. Keep your mind on the mission.”
“She was supposed to be the mission.”
“And we found her. Now there’s a new mission. We have to stop Dr. Wash.”
“We’re gonna kill him too, ain’t we? I ain’t usually the bloody-minded type, but he needs killin’.”
“You pulled the trigger on Tusk.”
“He needed killin’ too. Just ’cause I’m the fella with the gun when someone earns a bullet don’t make me a killer.”
“I’d love to debate the nuances of justice and impulse, but it’s hard enough flying in this soup when we’re just trying to moor up. Now we’re trying to get to the top of something that the whole of Fugtown has a vested interest in defending. Keep your eyes open for the funicular wires. They’re probably going to sneak up on us.”
“If you ain’t keen on smashin’ into the cables, how come you’re flyin’ so close to them?” Coop asked, dashing to the railing to focus on the dense purple mist.
“Because, as I’ve said, Fugtown has a vested interest in defending them. If we stick close, at least they can’t fire on us.”
“Tower comin’ up!” Coop shouted.
The steel structure of a support tower for the cables loomed out of the mist. Gunner spun the wheel and narrowly avoided peeling the envelope open on the struts.
“You sure this’ll be safer than gettin’ shot at? We been shot at before,” Coop said.
“Listen close and you tell me.”
Coop cupped an ear. What at first seemed to be the distant drone of the air traffic of the bustling airship port below slowly resolved into at least six separate sets of turbines that were steadily working their way closer. Soon the glow of ship-mounted phlo-lights started to approach from all sides. “I reckon stayin’ close is the right idea,” he said.
“I thought you’d feel that way.”
The ships drew close enough to be visible as ghostly forms in the fug. This close to the surface, visibility was practically nil. One by one, voices started blaring out of each ship, making various demands that Gunner and Coop had no intention of heeding.
Gunner kept as close to the cables as possible without scraping the belly of the ship. They were far enough from the ground that there was no longer any concern for towers. They wouldn’t show up again until they reached the cliff side. It seemed like it would be clear sailing until then. That apparent bit of mercy put both Gunner and Coop on edge. At times like this, if things felt like they were going smoothly, it usually meant they were heading into a trap. It thus came almost as a relief when a strange, reverberating sound split the air.
“What the heck is that, now?” Coop shouted.
“It’s coming from the wires,” Gunner said.
Coop leaned over the side and squinted down. “Tough to tell… Looks like that one little skinny loop there is hoppin’ around like it stubbed its toe. What do you reckon that means?”
“I’d say it means someone’s bringing that cable car to a stop.”
“Who you reckon’s doin’ it?”
“Anyone with good sense would stop the cable car with this sort of madness going on. And with me on this ship, the only one with good sense left is Nita.”
“How you reckon she pulled that off?”
“Something elegant and ingenious, no doubt.”
#
Nita gritted her teeth and squinted through her goggles as the main drive gear of the cable car’s winch sprayed sparks. A few quick turns of the vent valves had set the boiler to spraying its pressure, but the chamber was massive. Even with the dump valves open, the mechanism had plenty of oomph left to keep the car moving steadily. There was also the fact that if the cable car had gotten far enough along the wires, it would be on the slope and subject to gravity. If she wanted it stationary, she’d have to jam the mechanism. There were any number of ways to do it safely, but there was one surefire way to do it quickly.
“Almost… almost,” she growled.
She held tight to the rattling end of the sturdy maintenance hatch that she’d popped free of its hinges and crammed between the gears. The potent mechanism had made a meal of most of it, but once it was pulled far enough into the works, it started binding in at least three places. For once she was grateful for the mask, as it reduced the metal-searing stench of sizzling grease and overheated iron to something merely unpleasant.
When the machine finally completely seized, she took a deep breath and climbed out of the compartment. Goose was there waiting for her, evidently completely unconcerned by the unholy screech of a powerful machine sputtering its last. His wayward eyes were darting back and forth between the two technicians who had followed Nita to the equipment shed but found themselves without the fortitude to both push past Goose and leap into the works of the winch while it was in operation. Now they had looks of utter distress on their faces.
“You’ve… you’ve ruined it!” said the older man.
“Nothing a new drive gear won’t fix. Three days, tops,” Nita said.
“But… you… I…” the younger tech babbled. “Where is security? Why didn’t anyone stop you?”
“My guess, either Wash’s men killed them, or they’re still halfway across town trying to track down the lunatic riding the squarrel down by the canal.” She gazed up. “Or they’re distracted by that.”
They turned and, now that the screech of the winch had died down, heard the cluster of ships jockeying for position over the city.
“What now?” the young man said.
“That’ll be the rest of my crew. Gunner and Coop are the only ones I know who could hold the attention of that many patrol ships.”
Nita climbed onto Goose’s back. “Anything special I need to know about reinstalling the emergency brake on that cart?”
“How are you going to get there?” the young tech asked.
“That’s my problem. Now is it a standard brake system or what?”
“The cart is stopped. The winch is seized. What does it matter? The cart isn’t going anywhere.”
“Why would they disable the brake if they didn’t intend to cut the drive cable?” Nita asked. “Standard brake or not?”
“The emergency brakes are spring-applied wheel clamps with a backup cable clamp,” the older tech said. “You’ll need a spreader to get them reapplied. There’s one in the kit there.”
“Many thanks,” Nita said, kicking open the tool kit beside the maintenance hatch.
“What are you doing?” asked the younger man.
“She’s already ruined the drive system. If she’s right, at least she can keep the car from breaking loose.” The older fug person leaned closer, likely thinking he couldn’t be heard. “And it’ll get her and that crazy monster away from us.”
Nita lashed the spreader to one of her sashes. “If you need a hand repairing this when it is all over, I happen to have a fair bit of experience,” she assured them.
She climbed to Goose’s back and gave a quick whistle. Goose charged forward and scampered to the platform, now deserted. Apparently the apocalyptic sound of failing machinery combined with the unexplained gathering of patrol ships overhead had persuaded the people of Fugtown to seek shelter. In that way, they were a good deal smarter than most of the innocent bystanders Nita had dealt with since joining the crew.
Nita gathered up as many of the parts of the brake system as she was comfortable Goose could carry. They were heavy bits of iron, and though Goose could probably tote the lot of them, there was still the issue of keeping them on his back. When she had the bare minimum lashed in place with the last of her rope, she looked up to the wires overhead that suspended the car. Images flashed in her head of the many, many times Goose had proved unable or unwilling to follow her directions. She forced them from her mind.
“If you’re ever going to learn to stay focused, Goose, learn now. Let’s go. Onto the wires.”
She whistled a few commands through her mask. Goose tipped his head, turned to look her over with one wild eye, then launched toward the tower supporting the wires. He didn’t lose a step as he moved from the sturdy supports to the narrow wire. Cunning claws gripped it tight. A swishing tail swept about to keep him upright, and he scampered onward and upward.
#
Dr. Wash drummed his fingers and waited. He was at the edge of the precarious overhanging platform where the Keystone locals boarded the funicular to Fugtown. On a normal day, the crowd at the top would be a match for the crowd at the bottom. A funicular was mostly a swift way to send shipments of assorted goods up and down. It wasn’t unusual for a fug person to ride up with some crates, accept payment, and ride back down. Likewise for those delivering food, fish, and other supplies the surface folk were better equipped to send down. But the commotion in the fug below had attracted a press of people anxious to see what was happening. They were all gazing down into the stirring purple stew below. He was gazing up at the massive pulley of the drive wire.
“It stopped movin’,” he muttered to the “supervisor” beside him.
The funicular, like all products of the fug, was under complete control of the fug folk. That meant that the handful of people in Keystone who were “in charge” had little to do beyond wear a uniform, open and close doors, and do whatever the tinny voice on the other side of a speaking tube told them. Dr. Wash gazed through the dark lenses of his mask at the bearded man, who was looking awfully small and lost as he glanced anxiously between the speaking tube and the churning fug.
“I said the car ain’t movin’,” Wash said more loudly.
“They’re not saying anything,” the supervisor said. “This has never happened before. As far as I know, it shouldn’t have started moving. But it sure shouldn’t have stopped before the bottom.”
“You should make an announcement so these dopes don’t start gettin’ antsy,” Wash said.
“They haven’t told me what to announce!” the supervisor hissed.
Dr. Wash looked to the crowd. “Then you should start gettin’ people off the overhang before it gives out, don’t you think?”
The supervisor looked at the crowd. His relief at realizing that crowd control was within his authority and did not require authorization from the fug was palpable. He threw open the half-door separating him from Wash and the others and stepped out.
“All right, all right. Everyone back away. Everything will be back to normal in due course, but I can’t have you all overloading the platform. Back, back, back…”
As he shouted, Wash caught the door with a gloved hand and slipped inside.
“Moron,” he muttered.
He locked the door and shut the top half, giving him privacy and complete access to what little actual equipment was available on the Keystone side of the funicular. In addition to the speaking tube, which was mostly just echoing with the turbine sounds of ships that were far too close to it, there was a loudspeaker for addressing the public regarding schedules and delays.
Wash was no fool. He knew a hardware failure when he saw one. And though he wasn’t sure if they’d figured out his precise plan, he knew that if he were in their place, he’d be doing everything in his power to stop whatever seemed to be going on. Thus, the halting of the funicular was almost certainly the doing of the Wind Breaker crew. Fortunately, because he wasn’t an idiot, he’d planned for just such an occasion. He activated the loudspeaker.
“Attention, people of Keystone,” he announced. “I’m the businessman who loaded up the car that’s stuck out there right now. I was hopin’ the Wind Breaker crew wouldn’t figure it out, but I got some very dangerous chemicals in them crates. I was hopin’ to use ’em to make medicine, but if they get their hands on ’em, they could just poison pretty much anybody with ’em. I don’t know why they’d want to start slingin’ poison. Maybe they just want to get even once and for all on Fugtown. Point is, if they get their hands on that stuff, it’s curtains for Fugtown, and that means it’s curtains for Keystone. Ain’t gonna be no more trade. No more bein’ buddy-buddy with the fug, and a lot of dead fuggers. So if you got a ship and you got a gun, get out there and take down them Wind Breaker guys. Either that or bust up the cart before they can get their hands on it.”
The supervisor managed to tear the door open and pull him out just as he was finishing the message.
“What are you doing?” he said. “You can’t just say a thing like that! Is it even true?”
Wash laughed. “It don’t matter if it’s true or not. I said it, and people who want to believe it will believe it. Now outta my way, I got some messages that need sendin’.”
The supervisor began to object, but before he could get a word in, the now quite agitated crowd had turned to him for answers. That uniform meant he was the one responsible for announcements, so he naturally had to answer for what had just been said. Dr. Wash used the confusion to slip away. He found an out-of-the-way place tucked against the base of the primary support tower for the funicular’s pulley system and discreetly fetched a folded bit of paper from his pocket.
With slow, deliberate taps, he rapped out a message in the inspector’s language, reading from the page to ensure he did so correctly.
Open fire, boys.
#
“These fellas ain’t makin’ this easy on you, are they?” Coop said.
The cluster of patrol ships were getting bolder, attempting to force Gunner and Coop’s ship away from the wires. It had slowed the progress terribly, and further underscored just how necessary the relative shelter of the wires was. There were six ships on them, with another two approaching.
“I ain’t so sure we’re gonna be able to find a place to set down and dig up Wash with all these folks on us,” Coop said.
“We’ll figure it out,” Gunner said.
“Hang on. Nikita’s actin’ up. What is it, darlin’?”
The inspector tucked in Coop’s coat madly tapped out a message. They will shot. They will shot now, she tapped in a grammar-destroying panic.
“How do you know that?” Coop asked.
“What did she say?” Gunner said.
A distant, familiar buzz of fléchette fire came from one of the latecomers of the cluster of hostile ships.
“She said that was gonna happen. I guess someone up there is callin’ the shots.”
They weren’t quite near enough to fire with any accuracy, but they didn’t need to. Once one ship started firing, the others did as well. With them uncertain of where the shots were coming from and already anxious about the proximity to their precious transit system, it didn’t take much to set all weapons blazing.
“I’m shootin’ back,” Coop said.
“No you aren’t! We’re outgunned eight to one,” Gunner said, spinning the wheel and preparing a retreat.
“So? Just means I ain’t gotta be too accurate. Just sprayin’ over that way’ll be enough to hit somebody.”
“We’re getting to a safe distance and picking a different approach.”
Coop raised his head and squinted. “No we ain’t.”
“I’m the skipper of this ship, Coop. We do as I say.”
“What’ll we do about that then, Skipper?” He pointed to a half-seen figure darting along the cables.
“Tell me that isn’t Nita,” Gunner said.
“I’d be lyin’ if I did.”
He growled and spun the wheel again, angling back toward the fray as spikes started to glance off the envelope and graze the hull.
“We’ll keep to midrange. Harry them as much as you can. Our goal is to stay aloft and keep them focused on us. We can take a hell of a lot more shots than she can.”
#
The trip along the cables had been surprisingly smooth so far. While Goose was easily distracted, having literally nothing else to jump to did an excellent job of keeping him on track. As they climbed high enough for the fug to thicken, there was nothing but the buzz of turbines, the wail of wind, and the lengths of cable stretching ahead and behind. Every gust of wind caused an extra swish and scramble to keep the beast on the cable, and she was becoming increasingly aware of the sway and slack, but as death-defying feats went, this was one of the least harrowing she’d had to endure.
Until the ships started to fire…
As impassive as Goose had been in the face of danger, something about the buzz of the guns and the hiss of spikes through the air finally broke past his dull view of the world and caused panic and fear to flare.
“No, no! Just a bit farther! We can’t be far now!” Nita shouted.
Goose alternated between dashing unreasonably fast along the cable to screeching to a stop and huddling down as though he could hide from the crossfire. Nita whistled and shouted commands, but muffled by the mask as her commands were, the closer they got to the cluster of ships, the less often Goose even noticed he was being instructed. Finally, any semblance of following commands was abandoned and Goose charged forward, eyes shut and ears flat.
The wire shook and shuddered with the sort of motion that even a hefty squarrel like Goose couldn’t cause. It must have been the car. The dark form of the passenger compartment loomed ahead. Nita whistled and shouted, trying to get Goose to slow down, but the beast continued his charge.
“This is a terrible idea,” she muttered to herself as she shifted in the saddle.
They reached the car. Nita lunged aside to grab hold of the mechanism. Goose continued forward. She was dragged free of the saddle and hung precariously to the support mechanism of the car. Goose dashed onward until he became dully aware of the missing rider. He screeched to a stop, dashed back toward her, and simply continued on, bounding along the cable until he was out of sight.
“Goose! Goose!” she shouted. “I need you to get back here! And you’ve got most of the brake parts!”
He was already long gone, and certainly didn’t understand what she’d said regardless.
“Okay… Okay… One problem at a time. Can I get inside the cart?”
She hauled at the roof hatch, but it didn’t even rattle. It was either seized or braced from the inside, and the bolts were rounded off. She risked a look over the side to discover chains had been applied to the main door, and there wasn’t anything to hold on to for her to try breaking them.
Nita turned her attention to the braking system. “Dr. Wash, you certainly know how to sabotage something.”
The mechanism wasn’t just disassembled, as she’d hoped. The mounting points had been beaten out of shape. None of the bolts still had their threads fully intact. Even if she had all of the parts and a full tool kit, it would take hours of work to get this thing back into safe condition. She leaned over the side again and gazed in through the windows. As she had feared, a cask of Contaminant Six and several sizable drums of alcohol were all packed into a cart that was set to be smashed into the heart of Fugtown. The collision would spray the chemicals everywhere. Thousands would die. Fugtown would be crippled.
A stray spike sparked off the side of the cart, snapping Nita back to reality. She called upon her engineering knowledge and took stock of what she had tucked into her tool sashes and what was left of the mechanisms. The hasty calculations were not encouraging. She wiped her forehead and selected a wrench.
“I’ve done more with less…”
#
Dr. Wash pushed open the door to a large cafe beside the funicular station. It was normally packed, but between the stalled funicular and the spectacle outside, he had it to himself save two members of the staff, who were anxiously looking out the windows.
“Relax,” Wash said, tightening his mask a bit. “If things get outta hand, it’ll be the people down there who’ll get the worst of it. At first, anyway.”
His words fell on deaf ears as the two waiters remained glued to the window, mouths agape. Wash propped up his feet and leaned back. He couldn’t blame the waiters for refusing to tear themselves away. The cafe provided a fantastic vantage point. It was difficult to tell precisely what was happening, but every so often one or more of the ships would bob above the fug, or the wind would scoop out enough for the combat to be visible. Those brief glimpses were enough to establish what he’d hoped to see. The battle was still raging, and the vast majority of the fléchette fire was heading in one direction. The Wind Breaker crew, with their stolen ship, had not received any unexpected reinforcements.
Victory was virtually assured. If the battle raged on much longer, the funicular cab would be destroyed and the poison would rain over the city. Failing that, the drive cable would be severed and it would crash into the city. Even if neither case occurred, two more members of the Wind Breaker crew would be killed. No matter what, the cart would be stuck in place for more than long enough for him to work out a way to send it crashing down and get the job done. He had won. No one would be coming. He simply had to sit and wait for sweet chaos to take its due. A permanent shift in the balance of power. Vast rifts separating people from the supply lines they relied upon. And who was the only one ready to fill the gap?
Dr. Wash.
He was so pleasantly lost in his own thoughts, he’d not noticed that one of the waiters had pulled himself from the fug-facing windows to gaze out toward the seaside portion of town. After a few seconds, he shouted for his partner. Their excited murmuring filtered through Dr. Wash’s haze of victory when three very important words bubbled to the top of the conversation.
“The Wind Breaker.”
“What’s that?” Dr. Wash said, his head snapping around to glare at the staff.
“That looks like the Wind Breaker out there!” the waiter repeated.
“That’s crazy,” Wash grumbled, hopping from his seat to stalk toward them. “It’s probably just another coast runner or smuggler. You’d be sure if it was the Wind Breaker. That Calderan worked to make it pretty damn distinctive what with the red…”
He trailed off as he reached the window.
For a moment he was still, his expression hidden by his mask. When he spoke, it was with a raw, chilling rage.
“Can no one do the job I pay them to do?!”
#
A ship cut sleekly through the air. Five gleaming turbines hummed in all their perfectly balanced glory. They were the only aspect of the ship that seemed to be as it should be. The magnificent red envelope had a slack and shriveled belly, internal supports showing through like the ribs of a starving dog. The once-magnificent gondola was a skeleton. Wind whistled through to the exposed decks within. A single cannon emerged from the starboard side. There were no deck guns. Few enclosed spaces. It was the absolute bare minimum necessary to keep a ship in the air. Turbines, an envelope, scraps of gondola, and, of course, a crew.
Cap’n Mack narrowed his eyes and tightened his clenched teeth around his cigar. He leaned low to shout into the speaking tube over the wind whipping by him.
“We got a big ruckus up ahead. I reckon we’ll find our folks at the middle of it.” He stubbed out his cigar and clicked it into its tin. “Mask on. We’re goin’ into the fug for this one.”
Butch replied in the affirmative, though a bit colorfully even for her.
“Just make sure you’re loaded up, and treat them bits and pieces with kid gloves. I can’t afford to lose you or the bits of this ship that’d get taken out if they went wrong.”
He stood straight and danced his hands across the controls. For all the obvious issues of flying a ship that by rights ought to still be in dry dock, there were a handful of benefits. The Wind Breaker may have been missing most of its hull, most of its crew, and most of its equipment and gear, but it still had its full boiler and turbines. That meant the ship was faster and nimbler than anything else in the air. The ship roared across the sky like it was shot from a cannon, traversing the sprawling mountaintop city of Keystone in seconds. He barely had time to get his mask properly tightened before the Wind Breaker sliced into the fug fast enough to leave a wake.
Even with most of the ships little more than dark forms in the thick fug, he quickly determined that the ship he’d sent the rest of his crew to the mainland in was not present. They’d requisitioned themselves another one. The only question was, which one?
By process of elimination, the answer quickly revealed itself. Half the ships took potshots at the Wind Breaker as soon as it arrived. Those clearly were not his people. Fléchettes whistled through the air toward the Wind Breaker. Most passed right through the mostly hollow gondola. Still more of them missed the shriveled, undersized envelope. The handful that did strike it revealed another unexpected benefit of flying a barely airworthy airship. Without a properly inflated envelope, the surface was not nearly as taut, even on the upper edge. The thick, reinforced canvas flexed and dimpled with the blows, but few spikes achieved much more than a pathetic bounce and tumble.
Mack wove the stripped-down Wind Breaker between the various other ships, one by one drawing their fire. The most heavily damaged of them fell back, taking advantage of the momentary lapse in attacks to put some distance between itself and the others. That, Mack knew, would be his crew.
He continued to draw the other attackers away, using every ounce of the maneuverability to keep the bulk of the attacks from hitting their marks. He backed off on the speed to ensure he didn’t get far enough ahead to convince the attackers to switch to cannons. In the visibility of this stretch of the fug, they wouldn’t have much chance of hitting their target, but with the ship in its current state, even a handful of grapeshots would be all it would take to nick it out of the air.
Within minutes, he’d dragged the entire fleet of attackers far out over Fugtown. That job done, he doubled back and poured on the speed, returning to the limping but still mostly serviceable scout ship with his crew aboard. He pulled near enough to signal Gunner, then aligned the two ships. Coop cast grapplers across and pulled the gondolas close.
“Captain, I can’t say I was expecting you to save our behinds, but I’m glad you did,” Gunner called.
“Ain’t got time for pleasantries. I take it you made a deal with Wash that went wrong?” Mack said.
“To put it very lightly.”
“How’s Lil?”
“We have a treatment, but she’s completely lost her memory.”
“Long as she’s alive, that’s enough for me. What needs doin’?”
“Nita’s down on the funicular, working on the top of it.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t had the moment to ask, Captain, though we’re pretty certain it’s loaded up with enough poison to kill everyone in Fugtown. We’ve got to give her time to finish and then get her.”
“Clear enough. Stand by. Best this ship can manage is to run interference and get one shot off, but we managed to snag some of your toys before we left.”
“You didn’t…”
Butch climbed onto the incomplete main deck with a duffle bag. She carried it like she was afraid it would bite her and showed visible relief when she was able to heft it across to the scout ship’s deck.
“Most of these ships are patrols doing their jobs. I’d hate to kill them for it. Not to mention that everything we take down here lands on Fugtown.”
“They’re your guns and that’s your ship. You use ’em how you reckon you ought to. I’ll just keep ’em guessin’ until you do.”
“Aye, Captain. Coop, take the helm.”
“Aye, Skipper,” Coop said.
Butch dislodged the grapplers as Gunner hopped down to pull open the duffle bag with an almost childlike level of glee.
#
Blanche sat on a relatively dry stone in the marshy outskirts of Fugtown. She’d barely moved from the spot where Nita had dropped her off. Her eyes were locked on the sky, where the drifting lights traced out the battle overhead. As she watched, she clutched at Wink like a security blanket, her fingers anxiously stroking him between the ears. The little creature’s expression was one of weary resignation as he tolerated the nervous affection.
Terrible, confusing thoughts swirled in her head. She felt so worried for these people. They were lunatics, every last one of them. And from her point of view they were strangers. By rights, she shouldn’t feel any more worry for their well-being than she did for the people clashing with them. Their allegiance wasn’t even to her, it was to the woman she had once been. But that didn’t change the soul-deep fear she felt for what would become of them. It didn’t change the instincts and notions shrieking at her to somehow join the fray and defend them. With every passing moment she became more certain that what they’d said to her was true. They were her crew. They were her family. Dr. Wash may have been trying to manipulate her, but everything about the Wind Breaker crew seemed genuine. And they were out there, fighting a battle they didn’t even quite understand, while she was sitting here watching.
She felt for a pocket in her torn dress, forgetting that it had none. Instead she dug into her stolen purse and pulled out the vial she’d been given. They hadn’t even forced it on her. They hadn’t even really asked her to take it.
“It’s no good,” she mumbled. “I couldn’t help them if I wanted to. The battle is taking place up in ships. Up on cliffs. I can’t get to them. If they got this far, if they did all they claimed to do, then they’ll get through this too. Won’t they?”
They will try, Wink tapped on her arm.
“They’ll do it. They’ll do it,” she whispered to herself.
She rocked back and forth, clutching Wink and watching the sky until a crunching sound in the darkness derailed her one-track mind. She nervously snapped her gaze to the source of the sound. About midway between her and the proper edge of Fugtown was the massive, wild-eyed squirrel creature Nita had been riding. He was pawing at the wet soil and pleasantly munching on whatever it was he’d dug up. He seemed to be looking for something, perhaps confused as to why his rider wasn’t here waiting for him where she’d last climbed onto his back.
Blanche stood. Wink seized the opportunity to escape her arms and crawl instead to her shoulder.
“That’s… Goose, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “That’s Nita’s creature.”
Yes, Wink tapped.
“Then where’s Nita?” Blanche demanded, as though she was owed the answer.
Wink didn’t reply. He had no answer to give.
Blanche dashed toward the squarrel, moving without thought or consideration. It turned its vacant gaze toward her and continued munching as she got closer. She put her fingers to her lips and, before she knew what she was doing, whistled out a command. Goose plopped to his belly, eyes blinking one at time, and honked.
“Okay…” she said, looking uncertainly at her fingers. “I remember the commands for these things. I didn’t remember my own name, but I remember the dang commands.”
She stepped closer and investigated the beast. Perhaps it had been sent back for her? Perhaps it was as bright as Wink was? She looked the thing in the eye. It honked again, sniffed at the ground, and took a big mouthful of dirt.
Clearly it was not all that bright. Still, it could have a message on the saddle or something. She inched closer and peered over the thing. A few pieces of mechanical equipment had been hastily tied to the saddle. She couldn’t make heads nor tails of them. But in her search, she found a fresh gash in the squarrel’s haunches. Nothing serious, at least for a creature this large, but she shuddered to think what a wound like that would do to a human. And she couldn’t stop herself from imagining that it had happened to Nita.
Based upon the impulses left over from Lil, and the choices her past self had made, the diamond clarity of Blanche’s thoughts were a gift from her transition to fug person. From the moment she’d awakened until now, it had been wholly devoted to self-preservation. Now that same logic turned its attention to a new problem. Saving Nita, wherever she was. She couldn’t get onto one of those ships, and she had no reason to believe Nita was aboard one. She knew that the funicular was the focus of their attention. Nita had been riding the squarrel, which could easily scale otherwise precarious inclines and such. She probably had worked her way up to the top of the funicular, where Wash was almost certainly pulling the strings on what was happening now. If she wanted this madness to end and her new-slash-old friends to be safe, she had to find him and get him to stop it. That meant reaching the top of the cliff as soon as possible. That meant riding Goose.
She hopped onto the saddle and was immediately struck with a sense of familiarity. She grabbed the reins and hooked her feet into the stirrups. She’d done this before. She’d enjoyed it. Blanche whistled a command, and Goose sprang to his feet and into a dead run, honking excitedly as he went. She held tight and yanked at the reins to keep him vaguely on target, heading for the base of the cliff that the funicular serviced. Her eyes widened. A lunatic smile graced her face. It wasn’t that she wasn’t afraid. It was terrifying. And she still felt every ounce of anxiety for what might be happening to the old friends she’d only just been introduced to. But at the same time it was thrilling. It was action, motion. She wasn’t fretting, she was doing something. And that thing was right. It was what she was supposed to do. They reached the steep slope she’d only days ago crept down in her escape from Wash’s mine. An instant later they were bounding up a sheer cliff. She dared not look over her shoulder. Not yet. Until the ground was hidden in the purple haze, she didn’t want to risk losing her nerve when she caught a glimpse of it retreating in the distance. The quiet voice of reason nagged her that she should have a plan beyond “find Dr. Wash and bring this to an end” but she set it aside. The whole of her mind, body, and soul was wrapped in the rush to the rescue. The rest could wait.
Until it couldn’t…
Goose dragged her up the cliff in no time at all. The fug thickened to a dense pea-soup fog, and then it was gone. She burst out into the fresh air a few hundred yards away from the edge of Keystone. Immediately, she could feel that something was wrong. Deep, gasping breaths weren’t enough. Whatever change had overtaken her, it wasn’t through yet. She couldn’t breathe without the fug around her. The panic finally overcame the exhilaration. She whistled a fresh command and hauled at the reins until Goose finally veered back down the cliff into the wispy upper reaches of the fug. She took a long, deep breath.
“Dang it…” She gasped. “Dang it!”
She squinted through the curling tendrils of kicked-up fug. More ships were arriving to take the plunge into the fray that she could hear even at this distance. The funicular cable was jerking and swaying. Things were getting worse, and there was nothing she could do. She was a prisoner of the fug.
Unless…
She risked taking one hand from the reins and felt for her purse.
#
“I thought you had me take the helm so you could do some fancy shootin’, Gunner,” Coop said, hunkering down as a stray smattering of fléchettes peppered the deck.
“It takes time. These weren’t finished, you’ll recall,” Gunner said, screwing something onto an increasingly elaborate rifle-shaped object.
“I ain’t so sure I want you pullin’ the trigger on somethin’ you ain’t sure works. Laylow Island’s got a lot of smoky holes from you doin’ that.”
“I assure you, this will be worth the risk. I haven’t had the chance to fire a weapon of this type in ages. They only work in the fug.”
He attached a final component and raised the weapon. He took aim at the edge of the envelope of the nearest enemy ship. When he pulled the trigger, first there was little more than a flash of light and heat in the body of the rifle, like someone had set off a lackluster firecracker. Then a puff of particularly thick fug curled from the top.
“Shield your eyes,” Gunner said.
Coop squinted and turned away, not a moment too soon. The air sizzled and a needle-sharp shaft of piercing green light traced a line across the sky. Gunner swept it across the envelope, and it split like he’d pulled the thread on a seam. Still more bright green light spilled out as the phlogiston came spraying out of the slice in the envelope. The ship slowly began to descend. The eventual impact wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would be survivable.
Gunner laughed dementedly. “It works! The raycaster works!”
He pulled a lever, and a smoking-hot canister ejected from the side. He slotted a fresh one in from the sack and took aim. Another lancing burst sent another ship to an unplanned hard landing.
“Ain’t this that thing we stole from the warehouse?” Coop asked.
“It’s based on it. That one used whole tanks of phlogiston. This one uses canisters of ichor and heats them to produce—”
“I don’t care why it ain’t the same thing. Why ain’t we been usin’ it?”
He pulled the trigger a third time. The weapon seared a thick black line across the envelope of another ship, but only the tiniest trickle of phlogiston came out.
“There’s a lens inside,” he said as he reloaded. “We can’t figure out how to keep it from melting. As it is, we can get four or five shots before the entire focusing assembly—”
“Forget I asked. Just keep shootin’ until it ain’t worth shootin’ no more. Looks like you just pullin’ the trigger on that thing’s sapped the nerve out of half these fellas. The newcomers are turnin’ tail. This thing looks like it’s pert near twisted around to go our way.”
#
Sweat ran down Nita’s face as she applied leverage to the strips of metal she’d bolted to what remained of the mounting points. It had been less an act of engineering and more an act of inflicting her will on a recalcitrant pile of machinery, but she’d managed to clamp something of a boot onto the wheels that ran along the cable. Now she was working on getting something attached to the cable itself. Between the two improvised safety mechanisms, the cart might just be able to remain locked where it was until help could come along.
She paused to catch her breath. Until now, the air had been thick with the hum of turbines and the buzz of deck guns. Now that they were thinning out, she became aware of a more subtle and far more concerning sound. A series of short, toothy raking sounds was reverberating along the drive cable. Every few seconds there was a sharp springing sound and a visible twitch. Someone was sawing through the cable.
“No, no, no,” she muttered, hammering all the more vigorously to get the improvised braces tightened around the support cable.
Through her efforts, she managed to clamp one of them down on the broad wire before the thinner cable suddenly went slack. The moment the tension was gone, the whole cart started to grind slowly forward. The boots on the wheels scraped long furrows in their sides, clearly slowing them, but it wasn’t enough. With each passing moment the cart was picking up more speed. Nita took a shaky breath and reached behind her.
“When all else fails, trust in the monkey-toe,” she stated.
She pulled the massive wrench head from her back and hooked it over the wire. The wheels started sparking against it. She tightened the jaws until they were as tight as she could manage. A horrid metal-on-metal screech filled the air. Bits of scale and rust scraped from the wire and pelted her goggles. She pulled the cheater bars from her belt and slotted them into the nut of the wrench. Using all her weight and every ounce of leverage the bars could give her, she clamped the jaws down tighter and tighter. The teeth started to glow a dull red as the friction ground away at wire and wrench alike.
“Come on… Come on…” she begged.
Her boots started to slip, but one heel found is way to a fléchette that had been driven into the roof. She braced against it and pulled harder. The jaws of the wrench were almost white-hot. Two cherry-red streaks ran along the cable where it was gripped, and a brilliant ring wrapped the wheel that was grinding at the wrench. Now even the mask couldn’t take enough of the edge off the stench of burning metal to keep her from coughing.
Nita’s teeth clenched so tightly they creaked. Her gloved hands shook. Slowly, painfully slowly, the speed started to come down. The glow started to fade. After a harrowing minute, the cart bobbed to a stop. She opened her eyes. The runaway cart had traveled to nearly the center of the suspension cable. She’d traveled far enough into the fug that she was through the dense upper layer. The glow of lights below told the tale of just how far above the city she still was.
For just a moment, she eased the pressure on the cheater bar. Immediately the cart started to move. She leaned hard on it again and weighed her options. She couldn’t risk letting the cart build up speed again. She’d have no chance of stopping it. Her only options were to try to bring it slowly to rest at the bottom, or hold tight and wait for help. Either way, it was going to be a long time before she could rest.
#
Dr. Wash stood on the service catwalk on the pulley tower for the funicular and scrutinized the main support wire. He’d rendered a hacksaw toothless in the process of sawing through the drive wire, but he’d gotten the job done. At first the wires had shaken chaotically, and he eagerly awaited the crash that would cripple Fugtown and cement his future as the linchpin of trade for the region, but now they’d grown still. No cacophonous smash, no plume of poison spreading through the city. He gritted his teeth and gazed back along the service catwalk.
“Just how dirty am I gonna have to get these hands…” he muttered, marching toward the maintenance shack tucked under the platform that hosted the station. “I pay the mercs, they can’t get it done. I pay guards, they can’t get it done. Am I the only guy in the fug who can finish what he starts?”
He thundered up to a man in a similar but less classy uniform to the funicular supervisor. He’d been sleeping in a leaned-back chair, something that was a genuine achievement considering the commotion going on. The depth of his slumber could probably be attributed to the empty liquor bottle set on the ground beside him. Wash kicked the chair out from under him, and he collapsed to the ground. The man sputtered awake.
“You got the keys for this shed?” Wash barked.
“What? Who’re you?”
Wash dug out a sack of coins and threw them on the man’s chest. “The one who’s bribin’ you. You got the key to this shed?”
The man groggily rummaged for his keyring and held it out, his sleep- and booze-addled mind grasping the prospect of a bribe with remarkable speed.
Dr. Wash snatched the keys. “Now get lost. You don’t want to be around for this part.”
“What’s happening over there?” the man said, dull realization dawning that there was an event he’d been missing out on.
“Just get lost!” Wash snapped.
The man scurried away like a scolded puppy. Wash unlocked the shed and stepped inside. A saw had been easy enough to bring along. He’d needed it to help his boys sabotage the car. But to get through the main support cable inside of a week, he was going to need something more substantial. A cutting torch was waiting for him just beside the door, along with a mask and gloves that would be superfluous to his own. He strapped the torch to his back and marched back toward the strut for the main support wire.
The drive cable had been relatively easy to access. It was a moving part, in need of regular maintenance and oiling. The designers had provided a dedicated maintenance scaffold leading to the huge pulley above the station stop in Keystone. The massive cable that served as the rail for the cart to ride upon was another matter. It was far thicker, and if it were to fail, it would be far more disastrous. This cable ran down from the support strut that most first-time visitors to Keystone mistook for the boom of a crane lowering its hook off into the fug. The strut was massive, anchored into the stone of the mountain. It ran up through the platform and towered over the city, an artful construction clad in metal with strategic bits of timber bracing. Dozens of yards tall, just under four yards across, and leaning out over the cliffside. At its peak, the strut had something of an elbow so that it could leveled off and stretch far out over the fug. The cable it supported ran from its own anchor point, up the spine of the strut, and then out from its end like a fishing line cast out into the purple sea. A caged catwalk ran beside the cable for the length of the support strut, hanging rather precariously from the side like an afterthought. If he was going to be sure that the cable would release its payload, he’d have to follow the whole catwalk to its end and cut the cable where it left the boom arm. With the way things had been going for him today, if he clipped it at the mountain, the strut would turn out to be strong enough to hold the cart up on its own. He navigated a metal rung ladder to the base of the strut and kicked open the catwalk access door. Once he shut it behind him, he sparked the torch briefly and used it to fuse the hinges. No one was getting past that door. He’d have to cut it open himself when he was finished with the task at hand.
Wind whistled against him as he reached the point where the strut leveled off into the boom. His legs felt weak, but he pushed aside the reality of the swirling fug that was now the only thing that stood between him and the cruel cliffside below. The crowd on the platform swelled with shouting and panic. Perhaps they’d spotted him. It didn’t matter. They’d all have something more to worry about soon enough. He’d nearly reached the end of the boom when he heard the rattle of the cage around the catwalk behind him.
“What now?” he snapped.
He turned, expecting to find the guard having a sudden bout of responsibility and trying to reach him. Instead, he saw a crazed-looking squarrel clawing at the cage. It managed to peel back just enough for a thin, pale woman with a fiery look in her eyes to hop from its back and drop through.
“So. Blanche. Fancy meeting you here,” Wash said, gripping his torch tight.
“I don’t know for sure if I really was Lil. But I’m positive I’m not Blanche,” she said, stalking toward him.
“I thought you couldn’t breathe up here. I guess the fug’s finished running its course.”
She pulled an empty glass beaker from her purse. “Guess again.”
“What’s that?”
“A gift from the Wind Breaker crew. The cure for being fugified. It works.”
She stumbled a bit. The empty vial slipped from her grip and clattered through the slats to fall into the fug.
“You ain’t lookin’ so good. Guess it packs a punch.”
“It ain’t the only thing that packs a punch,” she said, shaking off the bout of dizziness.
“I suppose your memories are floodin’ back, then.”
“My head’s still fuzzy. So far, I only remember two things. The second one is, I owe you a long overdue beating.”
“What’s the first?”
“None of your business,” she fumed, stalking toward him.
Dr. Wash took a step backward and grabbed the igniter for the torch. He sparked it a few times. “You need to know something about me, Blanche.”
“Don’t call me that,” she rumbled, walking closer.
“I’m a survivor. I been around for as long as the fug has. Longer. I’m one of the few people who remembers things how they were. All this is me takin’ one small step in puttin’ them back the way they were. I’m takin’ back part of the fug.”
“From who? You are a fugger.”
“I’m not! I’m not a fugger any more than you’re ‘Blanche.’ That stuff changed how I looked, how I worked, but it didn’t change what I am, who I am. The people who lost it all? They died. Most of the fuggers are just the corpses of real people, as far as I’m concerned. They belong in the ground, and I’m puttin’ them there.” He shrugged. “If I make some money along the way? Consider it payback for the time I spent havin’ to live with ’em.”
“I don’t care. You held me prisoner. All this fightin’ is your doing. And I ain’t so sure you ain’t done worse.”
He clucked his tongue. “Grammar, Blanche. What would the other fuggers think?”
“Ain’t none of my concern what nobody thinks except me and my crew. Now, I took my medicine”—she cracked her knuckles—“time for you to take yours.”
Dr. Wash sparked the torch to flame and brandished it. “I’d like to see you try to take me out, all by your lonesome.”
“And here I am thinking I’m the one who lost my memory. Seems like you forgot something that even Blanche worked out for herself. If you’re fightin’ a member of the Wind Breaker crew, you ain’t never fightin’ just one.”
“You’re trying to get me to take my eyes off you,” Dr. Wash said. “We’re hundreds of yards in the air, in the middle of a covered catwalk dangling over the edge of a cliff, and your crazy critter is too big to follow us in. You’re bluffin’.”
A vicious chattering screech behind him suggested he’d misread the situation. Before he could turn, he felt the scampering of little claws spiraling up his leg, then the slice of cruel teeth through his trousers. He cried out in pain, then huffed a groaning breath as his former prisoner torpedoed him in the gut. The still-lit torch slipped from his grip. Blanche tore the canister free from his back and heaved it back along the catwalk behind her. Wink scampered up to her shoulder, a shred of Wash’s pants still in his teeth.
“You’ve had this comin’ for a long time,” she said, righteous satisfaction in her eyes.
#
Nita’s eyes were shut tight as she did her best to keep the cart in constant, safe motion. A monkey-toe wedged between a friction-damaged wheel and an aging cable was not a precise way to control speed. She’d found that the best gauge she had was the sound of the metal-on-metal screech. If she kept the volume just below the threshold of pain, she was confident there wouldn’t be a catastrophe when she finally reached the ground. But that meant she had easily a half hour of constant pressure ahead of her. She wasn’t sure her body would hold out. Keeping her eyes shut both helped her focus on the sound of the steel and kept her from being tortured by the dizzying view and massive gulf she had yet to cross.
It thus came as a surprise when something clattered down on the top of the car beside her. She flinched and nearly lost her grip. In a panic, she forced her weight back onto the bar and brought the swinging deathtrap to a complete stop.
When she opened her eyes, she was face-to-face with Coop.
“You holdin’ up okay, Nita?” he asked.
The deckhand was holding tight to a mooring rope that led up to the damaged scout with Gunner at the helm.
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m really not. We’ve got to keep this thing from crashing down, or a lot of people will die.”
“That’s what we figured up there. We got the more ornery of ships knocked down or chased off, but we took a few hits more than we’d’ve liked. That scout ain’t got the lift to keep this cart up all by its lonesome. Cap’n Mack thinks the Wind Breaker can handle it, though.”
“The captain is here?!”
“Sure! Thing’s been happenin’ while you been down here tinkerin’ and whatnot.” He glanced around. “Didn’t you have that critter with you?”
“Coop, I’d love to catch up on this chaos, but can we get something tied to this car before my arms give out?”
“I’m on it,” he said. He flagged down the Wind Breaker and caught the dangling mooring line. “It’s a pity Lil ain’t here helpin’ out. This’d be right up her alley,” he said, deftly tying a hitch into the massive line. “Once her head’s right, she’s liable to be right jealous of us, hearin’ what we got up to.”
#
The battle on the boom raged on. At the beginning Blanche’s desperate attacks were haphazard. The light-headedness that came with the antifug remedy wasn’t doing her any favors. But with each passing moment, her combat became more akin to Lil’s favored barroom brawl tactics. Indeed, with each exchange of blows, she was less Blanche and more Lil. Muscle memory, it seemed, was the most stubborn to leave and the quickest to return. Alas, Dr. Wash’s full-body covering wasn’t just useful for hiding his identity and filtering the air. It was a veritable suit of armor. Heavy layers of canvas and leather padded her blows, and her knuckles were bloody from bashing at that blasted mask. What it granted in protection, though, it cost in stamina. He was sucking wind through the restrictive filters and wheezing with each blow. One way or another, if he didn’t do something drastic, Wash was not going to come out on top.
Dr. Wash was well aware of this fact, and just as Lil’s desperate attacks were becoming more competent, his competence was becoming more desperate. He managed to kick her aside and dash along the catwalk. He was making a break for the cutting torch. Lil sprinted after him and caught his leg. The pair went sprawling forward. Wash’s grab for the weapon turned into a swat that clanked the canister aside. It bounced against the side of mesh that enclosed the catwalk and rebounded, clashing with its own burning end. One of the fittings took to flame.
Lil’s eyes widened. “Dang it!” she yelped.
She and Wink turned and ran for the far end of the boom. Wash followed. There was only so far they could go before they’d run out of catwalk. They didn’t even make it that far. After a long, shrill whistle, the canister detonated. Burning fragments flew in all directions. The whole of the support strut rattled. Metal screeched. The midsupport of the cable sheared free. Without the balanced load it was designed for, the whole strut started to buckle and sag. The wood of the platform splintered, angling the boom farther and farther down.
Lil pulled herself up on her elbows. Her ears were ringing. Wink was missing. The last she’d seen him, he was bounding along faster than her. Knowing him, he was probably well along the cable, far safer than she was. Goose was gone too. She shook her head and tried to stand. The air stank of the fug. Gazing through the grating below, she saw the stuff swirling not far below. The failing strut was dipping the end of the boom down toward its roiling surface. The very tip of the boom was already starting to slip beneath the purple toxin. The strut’s slow collapse had stalled for now, though that surely wouldn’t last. It might take seconds, it might take minutes, but the whole structure was going to fail and take anyone unlucky enough to be clinging to it with it.
She got to her feet and started kicking at the cage on the catwalk. As precarious as the strut might have been, for the moment it was a good deal more stable than the shaky bit of rapidly failing iron she was standing on.
The silence of blotted-out hearing gave way to a loud hiss. The next clank, she heard as well as felt. Dr. Wash had climbed to his feet. His coat was smoldering. One of the lenses in his mask was fractured and mostly missing. But he was alive.
“Look, if you want to keep fightin’, that’s all well and good, but let’s get on solid land first,” Lil said. “I just got my second chance at life, and I ain’t wastin’ it clashin’ with a man who don’t know when to die.”
He stalked toward her. He likely hadn’t heard a word she’d said. Even if he had, she doubted it would have mattered. There was no mind left in the eye peering out through the broken lens. There was just fury.
A support bracket for the twisted catwalk snapped. The caged walkway shuddered. Lil’s boots slipped. She scrambled to hold tight. Wash lunged at her and grabbed her leg. Another shudder and they both started to slide toward its sagging end. She clawed at the catwalk. The purple mist surrounded her as she slid to where the tip had submerged. When she finally got her grip, she was fully immersed in the fug and unable to see the man clinging to her legs. Unable to see the drop below her. Unable to see anything. She held her breath for as long as she could, but she lacked the strength to haul both herself and her assailant up. Finally, she coughed out a heaving breath and sucked in a lungful of fug. It tasted like ink. The stuff stung her mouth and burned her lungs. … But it didn’t kill her. Either the treatment had yet to fully take hold, or it never would. Either way, for moment, the fug was the least of her worries.
A few seconds after she discovered the fug hadn’t finished her, Wash made the same realization.
“What does it take to kill you?!” he growled, clawing his way up along her body.
“You’re one to ask. At least I ain’t been kickin’ around since the Calamity.”
She planted a solid kick on his unseen body. He lost his grip on her and grabbed hold of the catwalk instead. Lil took the opportunity to pull herself up and away. She dragged herself along the catwalk. The damage Goose had done to let her in to the catwalk had been widened by the collapse. If she could reach the gap in the cage, she could get out onto the strut. Wash pulled himself along just a few slats behind.
#
Coop had tightened up the mooring line and was ready to call for Gunner to drop a line to pull him and Nita up. She was just easing her weight off the monkey-toe when the cable rattled with enough force to nearly shake both her and Coop free. He managed to hold the mooring line with one hand and Nita with the other. The trembling eased, but not before the line displayed a worrying amount of additional slack.
“What do you make of that?” Coop asked.
“Someone’s trying to take the whole support cable down,” Nita said.
“What happens if they do?”
“It goes down and suddenly the Wind Breaker has to support the funicular car and the weight of that massive cable. The Wind Breaker can’t handle that.”
“So what do we do?” he asked.
“You get up there and try to stop them. I stay here and dismantle the guards so we can get this free of the cable.”
“Sure about that? You already almost fell once, I ain’t too sure I’ll… hang on, Nikita’s tappin’.”
He loosened his jacket and Nikita popped out. She drummed madly at one of his buttons.
Lil fought with Wash at the top. Wink on wire, tapping message. Wink heading back to help. All need help. Might die, she drummed.
Coop and Nita didn’t waste any more words. He hauled himself up the line far enough to whistle to Gunner, then dove to the dropped ladder rather than waiting for it to align with him. Below, Nita spun bolts free and started fighting with a metal guard.
“What’s going on?” Gunner called down to him.
“Get us up above the fug and heading for where this thing is hooked up. Nikita says Lil’s up there.” He tumbled over the edge and onto the deck. “You got a better spyglass than me? What about that rifle. It got sights that’ll see better? I gotta see.”
“We’re not even out of the fug yet.”
“I gotta see!”
“The rifle is the best we’ve got. Take it.”
Coop snagged the weapon from Gunner’s back and took aim to the west, waiting for the dense fug to clear. The seconds ticked by painfully. They could hear the cable twang and bounce with the weakening of the main support. When the air began to clear, Coop swept along the mountaintop. He scanned the skyline of Keystone, but the support simply wasn’t there.
“The dang thing fell! It’s gone!” Coop shouted.
“It can’t have fallen completely, the cable hasn’t fallen.”
Coop scanned until he spotted the mostly demolished funicular platform. The strut was twisted and strained. The boom was almost completely gone from view. But there was motion at the edge of the fug. Two figures were perched on the top of the strut itself, beside a hole torn in the caged catwalk.
“It’s Wash. Him and my sister are slugging it out. They’re out on the edge of the arm. The middle part’s all chewed up.” He looked over his shoulder. “Get us there! There ain’t much time!”
“Get on the helm,” Gunner said.
“I gotta keep an eye on the fight! He’s got his hands around her throat, Gunner!”
“You watching her isn’t going to do any good. Me with a rifle in my hands just might.”
“You been missin’ an awful lot lately, and that’s my sister.”
“Give me the rifle,” Gunner said, his tone dire.
“Fine. But you shout out what you’re seein’. I ain’t tryin’ to sit back here wonderin’ if I still got a sister.”
Gunner took his rifle and steadied it on the railing of the ship. He focused on the support strut. Coop was right to worry. Lil was on her heels, being pushed back to the edge. She was fighting Dr. Wash’s grip, and Wink was clawing madly at him, but he just kept bearing down on her. He didn’t seem to care if he lived, only if Lil died. Every few seconds he would force her another step closer to the edge.
They were at the extreme range of this rifle in the best of conditions. A stiff mountain wind and the rattling motion of an airship moving at full speed were not the best of conditions. He worked the bolt.
“You ain’t takin’ a shot at this range,” Coop said.
“We don’t have a choice.”
“He’s got his hands on my sister. They’re too closer for you to be takin’ shots. You can’t hit him from this far out.”
Gunner squinted through the sight. “Like hell I can’t.”
He took a slow, steady breath and tried to force all the anxiety from his mind and body. He watched the motion of the fug to judge the wind speed. He measured the rattle and sway of the ship. He took a deep breath and held it…
#
Lil’s vision was beginning to darken. Her struggles were growing weak.
The whistling wind in her ears joined the creak of failing steel. A sharp crack echoed across the cliffside, and the grip about her throat loosened. She caught a breath of air and shoved Wash away. He stumbled back and hit the top of the cage of the nearly vertical catwalk they’d narrowly escaped from. He held his hand to his side, where the bullet had found its mark.
“I told you,” Lil gasped. “You fight one member of the Wind Breaker crew, you fight all of us. And we beat better than the likes of you already.”
She grabbed the beak of the bizarre mask and wrenched it forward, yanking him off-balance. As he stumbled over the edge of the strut, the damaged mask came free, and he plummeted into the inky purple abyss below.
Lil allowed herself a moment of satisfaction with the victory and the souvenir before the shaky grip of an aye-aye about her leg brought her back to reality. The bad guy may have gotten what he deserved, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet. She could hear the metal of the strut failing. Its steady collapse had left its length a jagged and impassible twist of torn metal and splintered wood. Goose was nowhere to be seen, scared off by the explosion.
She turned to the fug. Gunner and Coop’s ship was getting closer. Just a minute or two more and it would arrive. By her estimation, that would be about thirty seconds too late. She turned back to the dangling catwalk. The section that should have led down through the platform was tangled up in the remains of the wooden planking. As the strut sagged down, the far end of the catwalk was tearing away. It might last longer than the strut would. She looked to Wink.
“What do you think, Wink? Think I can make it?”
Wink gave her an uncertain look, then bounded from her shoulder, deftly across the damaged patch of strut, and onward to safety.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, fella.”
The strut creaked and sagged.
“Now or never,” she muttered.
She took a few steps back to the very edge of the strut and got a running start. Planting her boot on the last safe patch before the metal became too twisted to walk on, she vaulted forward and struck the roof of the dangling catwalk hard enough to shatter two more of its braces, which swung down parallel with the cliff and sent fug swirling around her. Hand over hand, clutching the mesh, she dragged herself up. It seemed like every tug upward yanked the catwalk farther down. It was anyone’s guess which would come first: either she’d reach the top or the whole mess would tear free.
The metal screeched and rattled as the end of the strut finally failed. It clanked and smashed its way down the cliffside. The cable pulled free of its anchor and coiled off into oblivion. She felt the last few brackets give way. The catwalk started to slide.
“Gotcha!”
A hand grabbed the back of her dress and hauled her away from the catwalk. It tore away from the ruined platform and followed the rest of the mess into the fug. She looked up to find her brother hanging from the rungs of the rope ladder on the stolen scout ship.
“You sure do know how to get yourself into hot water, Lil.”
“Learned from the best, I reckon,” she said.
He pulled her high enough for her to grab hold of the ladder herself. She followed him up to the deck of the scout.
“How’s everybody else?” she said breathlessly when she was finally stable on the deck. “Wink ran up along the arm. Critter’s probably huddlin’ down under what’s left of the platform.”
Coop gazed out over the fug. Lil matched his gaze. For a few seconds, there was no sound but the sputtering of the damaged turbines and the muted shouts of the crowd that had witnessed the whole thing from the far edge of the damaged funicular platform. Then the gleam of five pristine turbines could be seen slowly rising out of the fug. The Wind Breaker emerged, and after a length of mooring line, so did the funicular car, with Nita perched on top.
“Ha-ha!” Lil said. “There she is! Come on. Let’s find a place to set down. I need a stiff drink. And it’s long past due you caught me up on old times.”