Free-Wrench, no. 1 (21 page)

#

Elsewhere in the warehouse, Gunner and the
Coopers crossed paths. Unlike Nita, they had been focusing on
quantity over quality from the beginning. Gunner was a walking
armory now, strapped with rifles, pistols, ammunition, and strange
assemblages of metal pipes, wooden stocks, and triggers that seemed
far too large to be a weapon intended to be fired by or at a human.
The siblings had grabbed anything and everything light enough to
carry and small enough to shove in a sack.

“What’s that big brass tube there, Gunner?”
Lil asked breathlessly.

“Something called a ‘rocket
-
propelled
grenade.’ I am thoroughly interested in two of those three terms,
so I suspect I’ll find it quite useful,” he said.

“I got a mess of booze and some of those tins
of fancy fish eggs they charge so much for. Plus, I got a couple of
those cameras and the stuff to take a
pile
of pictures. I
reckon we could start taking our own girlie pictures. They always
sell real good.”

“Yeah, but where you gonna get the girlies?”
Lil asked.

“Well, there’s you, and there’s Nita, and
Butch.”

“If you think me or Nita are gonna dress up
like them girlies you’re always selling pictures of, that brain of
yours needs adjusting. And no offense to Butch, but she don’t seem
like her pictures would fetch much of a price.”

“Well, what did
you
get?”

“Perfume and a bunch of bolts of that fancy
fabric they make down here, and some of them good binoculars and
telescopes and such,” she said. “I still got some sacks left. I
want to do another round to fill ’em up.”

“Coop, Gunner, Lil!” Nita called out as loud
as she dared.

“There you are,” Lil said. “Where’s your
sacks? Time’s a-wasting!”

“How much can the
Wind Breaker
carry?”
she asked.

“More than we can, so get to filling those
sacks.”

“No, I mean it. How much can it carry?”

“We ain’t been able to overload it yet. When
the cap’n had the fuggers fix it up for the long-haul trips, he had
them swap out the envelope for one of them heavy-lifter ones they
use for hauling coal up from the mines down here.”

“Could it handle three tons?”

All eyes turned to Gunner.

“Just about. The handling would suffer, but
it would get off the ground. Why?”

“Follow me. Bring the sacks. I think I’ve
found a way to really make the most of this,” she said.

She led the way to a loading area, which
contained all sorts of large steam engines ready for installation,
and where an enormous and curious device—a long, flat platform on
wide, rubber-studded wheels—stuttered and hissed. The platform’s
bed was already loaded with a few miniature boilers and small steam
engines, the likes of which only the fug folk seemed able to
create. An arm’s-worth of sacks had already been loaded onto it and
were well secured. On one side of the platform was a glowing
firebox hooked up to the most complicated tangle of pipes, tubes,
gears, springs, levers, and valves any of the crewmembers had ever
seen. A seat was bolted to the side of the mechanism and surrounded
by wheels and levers.

“What the hell is that?”

“They just call it a ‘steam hauler.’ It is a
steam-powered wagon. All we need to do is get the goods out here so
they can be loaded, right? This can haul five times as much as we
can. We load it up, roll it out, and empty it into the gig.”

“Can you operate it?” Gunner asked.

“I think I can get it moving.”

“Let’s do it then. Get this thing loaded
up.”

Coop turned his head, angling his ear toward
the wall. “Uh-oh. You folks hear that?”

“What is it?”

“I think we been found out. I’m hearing
turbines and a lot of yelling.”

“Let’s just get out of here!” Lil said. “Take
what we got. It’s already worth more than we made in the last few
years put together.”

“No. I’ve got a better idea. Coop, get to the
door, clear it of fug folk, and do what it takes to block it, then
get back here and start loading this bed with anything you
can.”

He fired off a salute. “This’ll be fun!” he
called out while running.

“Nita, you get to loading this up. I want
this bed
filled
.”

“What should I do?” Lil asked.

“I don’t care how, but get yourself up to the
roof with the flares. And listen very carefully, because you’re not
going to have much time to explain this to the captain…”

#

On the
Wind Breaker
, Captain Mack
still toyed with his cigar, quietly questioning if taking a few
puffs would be worth the potentially fatal breaths of fug that
would come along with them. Butch was watching the darkness in the
direction of the warehouse, while Wink took advantage of the
patrolman’s unconscious state to illustrate precisely how he felt
about the fug folk in general, and this one in particular. He may
not have had words, but he was quite expressive with bodily
functions.

“Good to know where your loyalties lie,
Wink,” Captain Mack said. He looked toward the center of Fugtown. A
pair of faint glows signaled the return of their “rescuers.” “They
are taking their sweet time of it. Just about time to haul up the
anchor, I’d say. And to get this fella out of sight.”

He shoved the sleeping and lightly soiled
patrolman with his boot, sending him tumbling through a hatch and
into the ship. With him safely out of sight, he took the controls
and began massaging the levers. In a maneuver that had taken
several years to master, he managed to dislodge the anchor from the
ground with nothing more than some fancy winch work and an
engine-assisted swing of the gondola. The groaning anchor winch was
still rumbling inside the ship when Butch pointed and bellowed
something. He turned to see the sky light up with an orange-green
flare that drifted slowly downward. Instantly the approaching
ships’ engines roared as they shifted toward the warehouse.

“Figures my crew would have the worst
possible timing.”

He pushed his own engines to the limit,
nodding in appreciation as the repairs Nita had made didn’t blast
to bits under the strain. The
Wind Breaker
surged forward,
but it became clear quite quickly that the fug folk saved the best
ships for themselves. Captain Mack’s craft was never known for its
speed. Its turbines were selected for good maneuvering and long
journeys. Even the tow ship was gaining on them. Fortunately, the
Wind Breaker
was much closer to the warehouse… but not
nearly as close as the patrol ship that was now becoming visible
directly below the flare. He glanced back at the other ships. At
this rate they would reach the warehouse at the same time he did,
leaving the
Wind Breaker
outnumbered three ships to one.

“Figures…” he repeated.

“Okay, boys and girls!”
Lil cried out in combined exhilaration and fear. “I think we got
their attention!”

She huddled behind the stout masonry of the
warehouse’s roof access. It was a brick enclosure that sheltered a
staircase leading down into the building from the roof, or at least
it had been a few minutes ago. Now it was rapidly being reduced to
rubble by a hail of fléchettes launched from the twin guns of the
hovering patrol ship.

“We just need a few more seconds!” Nita
called from inside.

“Well, I don’t know if you’re gonna get it,”
she replied. A brief lull in gunfire gave her a chance to lean out
and unload a few rounds with her stolen rifle. Like most things
they’d found since they’d approached the warehouse, it was an order
of magnitude better made than what they’d been using. The weapon
barked a short sharp report and actually managed to buckle the
metal mounting of one of the fléchette guns. “I hope I live long
enough to get good with this thing.”

The sound of a second and much more familiar
set of turbines drew the attention of Lil and the patrol ship
alike. The senior officer of the patrol ship pulled out his
megaphone. “Attention unknown ship. You will leave this area
immediately, or you
will
be fired on. We are in the process
of eliminating a trespasser and will not be interfered with.”

“I don’t rightly care,” came the captain’s
bellowed reply.

“The cap’n’s here! You ready yet!” Lil
cried.

“We’re ready!” Nita called back.

“Finally! Cap’n! Down here!” Lil waved. A
fresh round of fléchettes from the intact deck gun sent her back
under cover. “Hang on, I’ll light up another flare so’s you can see
me!”

She strapped her rifle to her back and pulled
out the second flare, little more than a bundle of brightly burning
material strapped to a small parachute. Lighting the fuse and
hefting it once, she made ready to heave it straight up, but a
thought struck her. With a shrug, she hurled it instead directly at
the deck of the patrol ship, which had pulled quite close in its
attempts to perforate her. The flare sparked to brilliant life just
as it landed on the deck, causing a few moments of panic as they
tried to figure out what she had thrown. It didn’t last long, but
it lasted long enough for the
Wind Breaker
to get close
enough to make it clear to the patroller that it had no intention
of avoiding a collision. The ship hastily withdrew, and the
Wind
Breaker
roared overhead, unfurling its rope ladder as it went.
Lil, with her typical disregard for safety and common sense, dove
off the roof after the rope and just barely snagged it, hauling
herself quickly inside.

There she found Butch, holding tight to the
railing around the hatch after having sent down the ladder. Lil ran
to the speaking tube in the gig room and hollered into it.

“Cap’n, I’m gonna start unhooking the gig.”
Since the winch for the gig was the strongest and the hatch above
the gig was one of the largest, they frequently detached the gig to
haul in larger cargo. To facilitate this, the final length of chain
connected to the gig was fastened in place with removable bolts,
above which were heavy-duty hooks. Lil deployed a pair of wrenches
and began loosening the bolts. “When you see the rest of the crew,
chase them down and we’ll pick them up.”

“That’s going to be a mite difficult, seeing
as how I don’t know where they are, and, without a distraction,
these patrol ships on either side of me aren’t going to give me the
time to find them,” he replied.

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about
that. Just get the ship moving down that there street, and don’t
stop for nothing.”

At that moment a deafening crack of thunder
split the air from below as a large section of the warehouse wall
exploded outward. The enemy ships pulled back, their crew shouting
and scanning the area for artillery. Shattered bits of masonry were
still raining down to the ground when a wheel-squealing,
piston-pumping contraption came roaring through the hole in the
wall. It was the steam cart, mounded with all manner of stolen
goods. Nita sat at the controls on the front end, her goggles
firmly in place. She was wrestling to keep the vehicle from plowing
into the buildings on either side of the street while the rest of
the crew clung desperately to the mound of loot. It rattled along
the road at a speed that clearly came as a surprise to its
passengers. A brilliant beam of light projected from a curved
reflector above the over-stoked firebox, lighting up the street
ahead of them.

“What the hell is that?” the captain hollered
over the speaking tube.

“That’s our haul. Pretty good one, huh?” Lil
said. “Get us over it.”

“We’re not going to have any luck loading
that thing up with these three ships all over us,” the captain
said. The sounds of fléchettes digging into the wood of the gondola
were already coming in bursts. “If you’re going to drop the gig, do
it on my mark.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

The
Wind Breaker
pitched upward,
phlogiston pumping into its envelope and its altitude rising. One
of the patrol ships flew beside them, its lone functioning gun
focused on the madly weaving steam cart below. The other patrol
ship was behind them but gaining fast, peppering them with
fléchettes that had so far been unable to puncture the additional
patches they’d applied during their days of preparation. The art of
ship-to-ship combat was effectively reduced to achieving and
holding the high ground. Whichever ship was highest had the best
shot at the envelopes of the others while simultaneously protecting
its own. Captain Mack had made certain his cannons were loaded, but
without his full crew they would be slow to reload, so he was
reluctant to fire them until he was certain he needed to. Though he
wasn’t precisely certain why his recently rescued deckhand was
determined to cut the gig loose, so long as it was going to happen,
it may as well serve a purpose.

He eased the ship over one of the two huge
fans that gave the patrol ship its speed and slowly descended. “You
ready to cut her loose?”

“Just gotta yank the last bolt, Cap’n.
Waiting for your mark,” Lil yelled over to the speaking tube. She
had a pair of pliers clamped onto the final bolt and was holding
tight to the railing around the gig hatch as the boat dangled
against the one remaining connection.

“Almost… almost…
now
!”

“Launching gig!” Lil pulled the bolt loose
and the boat plummeted a short distance before colliding with the
port fan of the patrol ship.

The powerful blades easily chewed through the
wood of the boat, but not without consequence. Damaged blades
buckled and finally tore free, one launching almost straight up and
missing the
Wind Breaker
by inches. The patrol ship wasn’t
so lucky, with one blade biting into the deck of the gondola and
another slicing open the top of the envelope to release a blinding
flare of fluorescent phlogiston lancing into the sky. It was enough
to send the stricken ship spiraling quickly to the ground, its
distress whistle blasting all the while.