Clementine

1. CAPTAIN CROGGON BEAUREGARD HAINEY

For six days, Croggon Hainey watched the Rockies scroll beneath the borrowed, nameless dirigible, until finally the last of the jagged ridges and snow-dusted plateaus slipped behind the ship on the far side of Denver. He’d made this run a dozen times before, in fair weather and foul, with contraband cargo and passengers alike; and on this particular trip a tailwind gently urged the ship forward.

But the speed that took him from the Pacific Northwest, over the mountains and down to the flatlands, did not improve the captain’s mood.

With his hands balled into fists and jammed atop his knees, he groused, “We should’ve caught them by now. We ought to be right on top of them.”

“The breeze moves us both,” the first mate said, and he shrugged. He adjusted his goggles to guard against the glare of the sun on the clouds and added, “But we’ll catch them. Any minute now.”

Hainey shifted in the captain’s seat, which had been built with a smaller man in mind. He removed his hat and squeezed at his forehead as if he could massage it into greater wakefulness or concentration. “They’ll have to dock soon. They didn’t even get a full tank of hydrogen back in Grand Junction. Simeon?” he asked the first mate, who was likewise crammed into a seat beside him.

“Yessir?”

“They have to set down in Topeka, don’t they? There’s no place else you know that’ll take them…or us?”

“No place I know of. But I ain’t been through this way in awhile. Brink may know something I don’t,” he said, but he didn’t sound very worried. Over his shoulder he asked, “What’s our fuel situation look like?”

Lamar adjusted a lip full of tobacco and said, “Doing all right. We’ll make it past Topeka, if that’s what you want to hear.” The engineer glanced at the doorway to the engine room, though he couldn’t quite see the tanks from where he was sitting. “Maybe even into Missouri.”

The captain didn’t precisely brighten, but for a moment he sounded less unhappy. “We might make Kansas City?”

“We might, but I wouldn’t bet the boat on it.” Lamar squeezed his lip to adjust his chew.

Simeon reached for a thruster lever and knocked his elbow on a big glass knob. He said, “Well, I might bet this boat.” But he didn’t push his complaint. Everybody already knew that the nameless craft, fitted for small men and light cargo, was not anyone’s preferred vessel; and no one wanted to imply, even in jest, that everything was not being done to retrieve the captain’s ship of choice.

Hainey unfurled himself from the captain’s chair. His knees popped when he stood and he crouched to keep from hitting his head on the glass shield that separated him from the sky. He put one hand out against it and leaned that way, staring as far into the distance, and as far along the ground, and as far up into the heavens as his eyes could reach, but the view told him nothing he did not already know.

His ship-his true ship, the one he’d stolen fair and square eight years before-was nowhere to be seen.

He asked everyone, and no one in particular, “Where do you think they’re taking her?” But since he’d asked that question a dozen times a day for the last week, he already knew he could expect no useful answer. He could speculate easily enough, but none of his speculation warmed him with hope.

The red-haired thief Felton Brink had taken Hainey’s ship, the Free Crow, and he was flying east with it. That much was apparent.

The chase had brought Croggon Hainey from the Pacific port city of Seattle down through Idaho, past Twin Falls and into Wyoming where he’d almost nabbed Brink in Rock Springs. Then the course had shifted south and a bit west, to Salt Lake City and then east, through Colorado and now the trail was taking them both through Kansas.

East. Except for that one brief detour, always east.

And it didn’t much matter whether the Free Crow would veer to the north or south on the far side of the Mississippi River. Either way, the captain was in for trouble and he knew it.

The Mason-Dixon meant only a little to him. Either side meant capture and probably a firing squad or a noose, though all things being equal, he would’ve preferred to take his lumps from the Union. The southern states in general (and Georgia in particular) had given him plenty already. The raised, pink stripes on his back and the puckered brand on his shoulder were souvenirs enough from a life spent in slavery, and he’d accept no addition to that tally.

So as much as he might’ve said aloud, “I don’t care where they’re taking my ship, I plan to take it back,” he privately prayed for a northern course. In the Union he was only a pirate and only to be shot on sight. In the Confederate states he was all that and fugitive property, too.

It wasn’t fair. He’d had no intention of coming back past the river again, not for several years…or not until the war had played itself out, anyway; and it wasn’t fair that some underhanded thief-some conniving boy nearly young enough to be his son-had absconded with his rightfully pilfered and customized ship.

Whatever Felton Brink was getting paid, Hainey hoped it was worth it. Because when Hainey caught up to him, there wouldn’t be enough left of the red-headed thief to bury.

The tailwind gusted and the nameless ship swayed in its course. A corresponding, correcting gust from the appropriate thruster kept the craft on track, and sitting on the straight, unbroken line of the prairie horizon a tiny black dot flicked at the corner of Croggon Hainey’s vision.

He stood up straight, too quickly. He rapped his bald, dark head on the underside of the cabin’s too-short roof and swore, then pointed. “Men,” he said. He never called them “boys.” “On the ground over there. You see it? That what I think it is?”

Simeon leaned forward, languid as always. He squinted through the goggles and said, “It’s a ship. It’s grounded.”

“I can see it’s a ship. What I can’t see is if it’s my ship or not. Give me the glass,” he demanded. He held out his hand to Simeon but Lamar brought the instrument forward, and stayed to stand by the window.

Hainey extended the telescoping tube and held it up to his right eye. From habit, he rested his thumb on the scar that bisected that side of his face from the corner of his mouth to his ear. He closed his left eye. He scanned and aimed, and pointed the scope at the distant dot, and he declared in his low, loud, rumbling voice, “There she is.”

Lamar held his hands over his eyes like an awning. “You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“How far out?” Simeon asked. He adjusted his position so that he could reach the important levers and pertinent buttons, readying himself for the surge of speed that Hainey was mere moments away from ordering.

“Couple of miles?” the captain guessed. “And open sky, no weather to account for.” He snapped the scope back to its smaller size and jammed it into his front breast pocket.

Lamar shook his head, not arguing but wondering. “They’ve been moving so slow. No wonder they had to set down out here.”

Simeon removed his goggles and set them atop his head, where their strap strained against the rolled stacks of his roughly braided hair. “They’ve never gotten any speed beneath them,” he said, the island drawl stretching his words into an accusation.

Hainey knew, and it worried him, but this was his chance to gain real ground. The Free Crow, which Brink had renamed the Clementine, had once been a Confederate war dirigible and she was capable of tremendous speed when piloted properly. But she’d been flying as if she were crippled and it meant one of two things: Either she was critically damaged, or she was so heavily laden that she could barely maintain a good cruising altitude.

Her true and proper captain hoped for the latter, but he knew that her theft had been a violent event, and he didn’t have the faintest clue what she carried. It was difficult not to fear the worst.

Only a significant head start had prevented Hainey from retrieving her so far, and here she was-having dragged herself across the sky, limping more than sailing, and now she was stopped within a proverbial spitting distance.

“Simeon,” he said, and he didn’t need to finish.

The Jamaican was already pulling the fuel release valves and flipping the switches to power up the boosters. “Fifteen seconds to fire,” he said, meaning that the three men had that long to secure themselves before the jolt of the steam-driven back-up tanks would shoot the dirigible forward.

Lamar buckled his skinny brown body into a slot against the wall, within easy reach of the engine room. Hainey sat back down in the captain’s seat and pulled his harness tight across his chest; Simeon used his last five seconds to light one of the hand-rolled cigarettes he kept in a tin that was bolted onto the ship’s console.

At the end of the prescribed time, the unnamed airship lurched forward, snapping against the hydrogen tank that held it aloft and leaping in a back-and-forth motion until the tank and the engines found their rhythm, and the craft moved smoothly, and swiftly. Hainey didn’t much like his temporary vessel, but he had to give it credit-it was fast, and it was light enough to soar when necessary.

“What are we…” Lamar said from his seat on the wall, then he swallowed and started again. “What will we do when we catch them?”

The captain pretended he hadn’t given it much thought. He declared, “We’re going to kill the sons of bitches and take our ship back.” But it would be more complicated than that, and he didn’t really know what he’d find when the ships and their crews had a chance to collide.

He’d been weighing the pros, cons, and possibilities since leaving Seattle.

The Free Crow was heavily reinforced, but heavily powered to compensate for its armor. It was a juggernaut of a machine, but if Hainey had learned one thing from following the bird over a thousand miles, he’d learned that Brink’s crew did not yet know what the Free Crow was capable of. The ship was barely flying without knocking into mountains and mowing down trees.

The unnamed craft that hauled Hainey and his two most indispensable crew members was no physical match for the Free Crow, and this was no secret. Likewise, Hainey had reason to believe that Brink’s crew outnumbered his own by three or four men, and maybe more.

In retrospect, he might’ve been better served to buy a bigger interim vessel and cobble together a thicker crew; but at the time, speed had been the more pressing priority and anyway, if he’d taken all afternoon to go shopping for the perfect pursuit vehicle, they’d never be this close to catching Brink now.

Lamar grumbled something from the engine room door.

“What was that?” Hainey asked.

“I said, I was thinking maybe we should’ve brought an extra warm body or two.”

And the captain said, “Sure, but where would we have put ’im?”

“Point taken, sir.”

Simeon, who never took his eyes off the growing black dot of the Free Crow, said, “He’s wishing we’d brought that Chinaman Fang, at least. Captain Cly might’ve let him join us, if you asked him nice.”

Hainey knew that much already, so he nodded, but didn’t reply except to say, “The three of us will be plenty of man to take back our bird. Fang’s good at what he does,” he agreed. “A good man to have on board, that’s for damn sure. But we’ve got the Rattler. Lamar, why don’t you unhook yourself and make sure it’s ready to bite.”

“Yessir,” the engineer said. He unfastened himself from the wall and, swaying back and forth to keep his balance, he grasped the edge of the engine room door to swing himself inside. The unnamed ship had a small cargo hold, but it was affixed beneath the cabin-and Hainey had insisted on keeping the Rattler within easier reach.

“Less than a mile out,” Simeon announced calmly.

“Lamar! Get that thing on deck!” Hainey ordered.

Lamar struggled with a crate, scooting it jerkily across the tilting, lilting floor. “Right here, sir.”

“Good man,” Hainey told him. “Get back to your seat. This landing might get a little rough,” he ordered, and then unfastened himself.

“Sir?”

“You heard me. I’ve got to get this thing out and working before we set down,” he said. And while the nameless craft charged forward, Hainey popped the crate’s lid. He pushed a coating of sawdust and pine shavings aside to reveal a six-barreled gun. Its brass fittings shined yellow and white in the afternoon sun, and its steel crank gleamed dully at the bottom of the crate. The Rattler was a monster, and a baby brother to the popular Gatling Gun that had made itself at home in the war back east. And although it was designed to be carried on a man’s shoulder, it required a man and a shoulder of exceptional strength to hoist it and fire.

Lamar was a slight fellow, not more than a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet with rocks in his pockets. Simeon was tall and just a bit too beefy to be described as wiry, and although he might’ve been able to heft the weapon, he likely could not have fired it alone-turning the crank with one arm while the other counter-balanced the thing.

So its use fell to the captain.

Croggon Hainey did not have all the height of his first mate, but he had a back as wide and square as a barn door, with shoulders stout enough to heave the heavy gun and strong enough to balance it. He aimed better with a second man behind him to steady the gun or spin the crank, and when the gun was fully operational he could scarcely maneuver beyond walking a straight line; but especially at a distance, the Rattler turned him into a one-man army.

And in Hainey’s experience, as often as not, he didn’t even need to fire it. Most men took one look at the massive, preposterous weapon and threw their hands into the air.

The captain flipped the gun over and opened a secondary box within the crate, from which he withdrew a long thread of ammunition. It dangled from his arm while he popped the gun’s loading mechanism; the bullets bounced against one another heavily, clanking like cast-iron pearls on a necklace, and they rapped against the crate while Hainey worked.

“Half a mile out,” Simeon said. “And they’re disengaging from…it looks like one of those portable docks. Something like Bainbridge has, back west.”

Hainey fed the ammunition into position and returned the Rattler to an upright state. “Portable dock? Out on the plains? That’s madness,” he said, even though he’d heard of it before. It’d been a long time since he’d come this far east, that was all; and he didn’t realize how common they were becoming. He stood up and kept his head low, leaving the gun propped in the crate and ready to be picked up at a moment’s notice.

Simeon nodded, and said, “Or brilliance. Not much traffic out this way. Might be better to bring your gas to the dirigibles, if the dirigibles aren’t coming to you.”

“But out in the open?” Hainey adjusted the seat buckles around his coat as he reassumed his position in the captain’s chair. “It’s a good way to get yourself robbed or conscripted,” he mumbled.

Out through the windshield he could see it now, more clearly without the glass, yes-the black dot more than a dot now, more of a distinct shape. And he could also see the portable dock, operated by madmen or geniuses. It was a pipework thing shaped like a house’s frame, and held between two wagons. Under the wagons’ canopies Hainey assumed there’d be hydrogen generators lined with copper, filled with sulfuric acid and bubbling metal shavings. Hydrogen was easy to make-and easy to divvy out at a capitalist’s mark-up for the hassle and location.

Four horses each were hitched to the wagons, with drivers ready to pull and run at the first sign of danger.

“We’ll have to watch out for those,” Simeon said. “We should let them get the Free Crow off the dock and moving. We can’t take a chance with the Rattler, not this close to the dock. One stray bullet and we’ll blow the whole thing to hell, ourselves included.”

The captain said, “I know, I know.” And he did know, but he hated letting the Free Crow rise-knowing that it was about to run again, and knowing he was so damn close and he might fail anyway. A plan snapped quickly together in his head, and he spit it out while it still sounded good. He said, “We’ll get up under them, and deploy our hooks. We’ll pin this boat to our bird, reverse the thrusters, and drag us both down.”

“You want to crash us all together?” Lamar nearly squeaked. “I don’t think this ship can take it.”

“I don’t either. But the Free Crow can, and that’s the only ship I’m worried about. If we both go to ground, we can take Brink and his boys apart, man to man.”

“Or man to Rattler,” Simeon grinned.

“Whatever it takes. We’ll clean them out of our bridge and take our bird back, and that’ll be the end of it.” He said the last part fast, because the nameless ship was closing in swift and low on the Free Crow, and Felton Brink was no doubt very, very aware that Croggon Hainey was incoming and unhappy.

Simeon’s half-smile deteriorated. He made a suggestion phrased as a question. “Shouldn’t we cut the thrusters? At this rate we’re going to ram them.”

“So we’ll ram them,” Hainey said. “My bird can take it. Ready the hooks, mate. We won’t have long to fire them. We’ll catch them on the ricochet.”

Lamar choked on one response and offered another. “You want to hit them, then grab them on the bounce?”

“Something like that, yeah. And buckle yourselves down, if you aren’t already. Something aboard this bird is just about bound to break.” He braced his legs against the underside of the console, setting his feet to the rudders and refusing to reach for the brake.

In those last few seconds, as the dirigible swooped down its interim captain watched his own craft shudder in the air, struggling to take to the clouds. He looked down at the plains and saw the portable gasworks beginning to fold under the panicked hands of the men who ran it. Below, they disengaged the frames and hollered at the horses to move, even before they were holding the reins; and Hainey understood. No man in his right mind wanted to get between a big set of hydrogen tanks and a firefight.

They were so close now, Hainey could see the horse’s mouths chomping against the bits, and the strain of their haunches as they surged to move the wagons. He could see the hasty streaks of a too-rushed paint job on the side of his former craft, covering up the silver painted words that said Free Crow.

It was a ridiculous thing that Brink had done, sillier than sticking a false nose or mustache on the president of the United States. No air pirate at any port on any coast would have mistaken the repurposed war dirigible for any other vessel.

“Sir-” Simeon said, but he had nothing to follow it.

“Hang on,” Hainey said to his first mate and engineer. His feet jammed against the pedals to turn the ship, and it turned, slowly, shifting midair and sliding sideways almost underneath the Free Crow-until the front deployment hooks were aimed at the only place where there wasn’t any armor. Then he ordered, “Fire hooks!”

Simeon didn’t ask questions. He jerked the console lever and a loud pop announced the hooks had been projected from their moorings. The hissing fuss of hydraulics filled the cabin but it wasn’t half so important as the scraping thunk of the hooks hitting home.

“Cut thrusters, and retract!” Hainey shouted. “Retract, retract, retract!”

Simeon flipped the winding crank out of its holding seam and turned it as fast as he could, his elbow pumping like a train’s pistons until the nameless ship’s shifting position became more than a tip-it was a tilt, and a firm, decided lean. “Got it sir,” he said, puffing hard and then gasping with surprise when his elbow was forced to stop. “That’s as far as we can bring them back.”

“It’s enough,” Hainey swore, and it must have been, because the nameless ship was swaying all but sideways, drawn up underneath the Free Crow.

The Free Crow’s left thruster fired up against the nameless ship’s hull, down at the cargo bay where it scorched a streak of peeling paint and straining, warping metal. The engine chewed hard at the unimportant bits of the latched-on ship, but the ships were bound together like bumblebees mating and now, they could only move together.

Hainey’s thrusters had been cut at the collision, and inertia pushed the ships together in a ballroom sway that made a wide arch away from the temporary docks. Locked as they were, the ships made half of a massive, terrible spiral until the right thrusters on the Free Crow blasted out a full-power explosion-jerking both the vessels and tightening the gyre until the ships were simply spinning together, a thousand feet above the plains.

Within the nameless ship all men grasped everything solid, and Simeon even closed his eyes. He said, “Sir, I don’t know if I can-”

“You can take it,” Hainey told him. “Hang on, and hang in there. We’re going down.”

“Down?” Lamar asked, as if saying it aloud might change the answer.

“Down,” the captain affirmed. “But it’s a carousel of the damned we’ve got here; it’s…hang on. Jesus, just hang on.”

The landscape rotated in the windshield, pirouetting first to the brown grasslands below, and then to the brilliant blue and white sky, and then back to the horizon line, which leaped alarmingly, and then again, to the earth that was coming up so fast.

In glimpses, in those awful seconds between spinning and falling and crashing, Hainey saw a tiny corner of the Free Crow’s front panel and he could spy, through the glass, a tumbling terror on the deck of his beloved ship-and it pleased him. He tried to count, in order to make something productive of the frantic moments; he saw the red-haired captain, and a long-haired man who might’ve been an Indian. He saw a helmeted fellow, he thought; and for a moment he believed he saw a second long-haired man, but he might’ve been wrong.

The ground lurched up and the nameless ship lurched down, until there was nothing else to be seen out through the windshield and the end was most certainly nigh. Hainey covered his head with his hands and Simeon propped his feet up on the console, locking his legs and ducking his own head too.

And a tearing, ripping, snapping noise was accompanied by a yanking sensation.

“What was that?” Lamar shrieked.

No one knew, so no one answered-not until the second loud breaking launched the nameless ship loose from the Free Crow, and flung it into the sky.

“The cables!” Hainey hollered, calling attention to the problem even as it was far too late to do anything about it. “Thrusters, air brakes, all of it, on, now!” He slapped at the buttons to ignite the thrusters again and tried to orient himself enough to steer, but the ship was light and it was flying as if clipped from a centrifuge and they were no longer falling, but destined to fall and to skid.

The thrusters burped to life and Hainey aimed them at the ground, wherever he could spot it.

Simeon said, “We have to get up again. We have to get some height under us.”

“I’m working on it!” Hainey told him.

But the thrusters weren’t enough to fight the gravity and torque of the broken hook cables, and the downward spiral cut itself off with an ear-splitting, skimming drag along the prairie that jolted all three men down to their very bones. The ship tore against the ground, and the men’s bodies were battered in their seats; the dust and earth scraped into the engines, into the burned cargo bay, and into the bridge; and in another minute more, the unnamed ship ground itself to a stop while the so-called Clementine staggered across the sky towards Kansas City.