21

Ashton bent over the rusting rudder controls of the boat and tried to jerk them free once more. The converted airship had all the tools of the sea vessel it had been before taking to the sky; unfortunately, they were all in disrepair. With the air bladders melted and only one unbroken mast to support the sail, they had very little chance of making shore without a way to change directions, but try as he might, he could not concentrate.

Every sway and dip of the vessel reminded him of their precarious position. Ominous shudders pulsed through the water, buffeting the ship as steam hissed from surfacing heat plumes all around them. In the distance, a crimson glow bubbled the surface, the dark shape at its center growing ever larger.

Ashton wrinkled his nose at the gaseous cloud passing across the bow. A hot eddy of air moved it quickly, but his eyes watered all the same. The soft glow of the Tesla Dome’s grid just beyond the haze was promising, but the fact that they did not yet need gas masks gave credence to his guess that they were still a ways off shore.

He scanned the dark waters beyond the railing, searching for the tell-tale silhouette of a horde ship. These waters had more than just the dangers unleashed by the quakes. Bands of pirates and looters trolled the seas near the coast. Without a security force ship as their chaperone, they were exposed to attack. He closed his eyes, straining to hear the metal grind of the steel-bottomed ships pirates used to ram passenger and cargo vessels.

Another thump against the hull elicited a stifled yelp from outside and it pulled his gaze. There, moving in the darkness, Charlotte toiled on the sails while Berkley erected the aethergraph antennae. Dark swaths of clouds floated past the nearly full moon, muting the light and casting mottled shapes on the deck. She worked by candle, the glow of the flame pooling on her dark tresses.

He’d lost himself earlier. Embracing her and kissing her as if she were his to do so. She is so brilliant, so brave. I don’t know if I am losing my way with her or if I am finally, after so long, finding it once more. Shaking his head, he wrenched on the locking pin only to shear it off. He wiped his brow with a sleeve and found his gaze going back to Charlotte. His doubt with The Order fueled the unsettled feeling within him, and yet he knew it was Charlotte’s influence that gave him pause. From the very moment he’d encountered her she’d relentlessly pulled him from what he had always known and trusted. She saw the world differently and he wasn’t sure if he hated or loved her for it.

Where he strove to understand intellectually, Charlotte’s compassion seemed deeply personal. First for her father and then Berkley, setting off a near riot in Port Rodale out of fear the old man was in danger. It was a reckless path, but so far it was the one course of action that achieved results. Berkley knew the tinkerer her father spoke of, Collodin, something Ashton had not been able to discover entering queries with his informants. Trusting Charlotte’s instincts, even though reason railed against it, seemed the best route.

He’d always filtered his decisions through the prism of The Order’s goals, but now with everything coming to light, The Order’s betrayal, and her father’s secrets, Ashton found himself unable to get his bearings.

Colonel Blackburn saw fit to direct the journal and its secrets to this mysterious Signor Collodin. That now seemed the only course of action that made sense, especially if Collodin could decipher the journal’s strange markings. There was no time to lose. The Trembler he and Charlotte encountered up in Outer City was not the first he’d seen there and certainly not the only one he knew to exist outside the wasteland. Something was terribly wrong and they did not have the luxury of time to untangle all the clues.

Outside, Berkley lifted the glass dome of the aethergraph receiver and extended the two filament wires of the machine. Muttering under his breath at the shock of a residual charge, he positioned the metal caps on the end of either antennae, and attached the drive crank to the small steam works box at the base of the contraption. The older man struggled to wind the machine with the required force.

Ashton stood, wiping the grease off of his hands as he made his way out onto the deck.

“Lizzie sent me,” Berkley said to Charlotte as Ashton walked up to join them.

“That is how you knew to come and get us?” Charlotte asked. “You are part of Defiance?”

“Since its inception eight years ago,” Berkley muttered. “Though it is not what it once was.”

“How do you know Collodin?” Charlotte asked. “Have you met him? What is his role in all of this?”

“Slow down,” Berkley grumped. “I said I have heard of Collodin, but I know nothing more about him.”

“You said he was mad,” Charlotte argued.

Ashton raised a brow, watching Berkley. “Is he?”

“There are rumors,” Berkley muttered. “But his location I did not know. I asked colleagues and friends to seek further information after we spoke, Lizzie being one of them. That is how she alerted me to help you. She was much relieved to have an ally at Port Rodale.”

“So I am no closer.” Charlotte visibly slumped. “There is nothing more on Collodin?”

“Well, that is what I am attempting to decipher,” Berkley huffed. “Lizzie said she had a lead on where he may be, but the first order of business, however, is to send out a distress call. We are mere hours from another attack. I am sure of it.”

“Are we close enough?” Ashton asked, bending and taking over the task. “To the shore, I mean? Aethergraph signals begin to dissipate as soon as they leave the Tesla Domes, do they not?”

“How does it get to Outer City hotels?” Charlotte rubbed her jaw, a shiver shaking her small frame. Still unable to locate her father’s cloak in the rubble of the ship, Ashton peeled off one he’d found with Berkley’s things, draping it over her shoulders. She looked up at him gratefully. “Are there enhancers of some sort between the earth and the clouds?”

“There are repeaters,” Ashton explained, and squinted as the brilliant tendrils of electricity arched across the empty space between the two metal caps. He took in the mismatched electrodes and too large connectors and raised a brow. “Mechanisms that capture and re-broadcast the aethergraph signal. A particularly large one dangles on a large cable, hundreds of feet below Port Rodale. Although this machine is a design I have not encountered before.”

“Tommy-rot!” Berkley said with irritation. “This is one of the first aethergraph receivers ever built…or rather, one of the first designs. And the signals don’t dissipate outside the dome. The Union Security Bureau interrupts them.”

“That is not possible,” Ashton said.

“Believe what you will,” Berkley snapped. “Even after all you have seen.”

Ashton thought better of arguing. A final crank set the small engine going and he stood, arms crossed, as Berkley typed a message and hit the deliver button.

The older man then ripped off the copy of the sent message and put it in his pocket.

The move piqued Ashton’s interest, but an incoming aether missive sent the machine going again and he didn’t ask to see the distress signal’s wording.

Wondering at the incoming note, he squinted at the paper, trying to read between the etching wands. They bounced, quivering as they burned the message onto the rolling paper tape. The miniscule arcs of electricity glowed blue in the dark. The machine stopped after only a few seconds and Ashton looked to Berkley, surprised.

“Do we need to find a repeater?” Charlotte asked.

“No, no,” Berkley answered. “The message is coded. It is short.” He ripped it from the machine and carried the tape in his weathered hands back into the wheelhouse.

“Coded?” Ashton followed behind, pulling Charlotte with him. Her cold hands gripped his and he pulled his gloves off with his teeth as they went. Handing them to her, he looked over Berkley’s shoulder. “From Lizzie?”

The tinkerer pulled back his sleeve, revealing a small, enumerated wheel on his wrist, a deciphering device.

Ashton had one himself.

Berkley did not answer, instead reading the symbols on the aethergraph tape, he found its partner on the wheel. Pulling an ink bottle from the many cubby holes on the small desk, he dipped his pen and then wrote a letter underneath the symbols.

Charlotte stood next to him, flexing and relaxing her hands.

“What is it?” Ashton asked and looked at the message. “It is from her, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course,” Berkley said, his tongue peeking from his mouth as he concentrated.

“What does she say?” Charlotte asked.

Berkley nodded, finishing his writing. “It appears she has uncovered information on Collodin.”

“What is it?” Charlotte’s face lit up with hope.

“Something about grates?” Berkley shook his head, scratching out the message. “That cannot be correct. I will attempt to decipher the code again.”

“No…” Charlotte bit her lip, stilling Berkley’s writing with her hand. “My father started to say something about that to me, I think, but we were interrupted by the Union Soldiers. What does she say, exactly?”

“It is unclear, Miss Blackburn,” Berkley snapped. “Please step back and give me room to work.”

“What is it? Is something wrong?” Ashton noted the sudden angry shift to Berkley’s demeanor.

Charlotte leaned forward the moment Ashton surmised the rest of the message, too late for him to stop her. “Charlie, wait…” Ashton tried.

“Aunt Sadie?” Charlotte gasped, as looked up at Ashton with sorrow bringing tears to her eyes. “The metal-clad she was on…it sank. S—she drowned.”

“Pirates,” Berkley explained. “The Shore Patrol has her body.”

“I am so sorry, Charlie,” Ashton began.

“There is more,” Berkley whispered. “There has been a warrant issued for you, Miss Blackburn.”

“Me?” Charlie trembled next to him. “They want to arrest me?”

“Yes, for collusion with your father in a plot against the Peaceful Union.” Berkley looked up at them, his face tight. “If found, you are to be arrested for high treason along with him.”

“That is where they took him? To prison?” Charlotte stammered, eyes filling again. “With what proof?”

“Is there a bounty?” Ashton asked. His gaze flitted to a pale Charlie as he nudged Berkley. “What price did they put on her head?”

“One hundred thousand in silver for whoever delivers her to the Governors.”