The Oilman's Daughter (12 page)

The man with the dark olive skin grinned, revealing a gold tooth. “Your man Zeric was a tremendous help. He knew we would offer a much higher price for the girl than that American nitwit. Our oil reserves are vaster and we desire to extract and refine it in great quantities. Miss Renault and her father hold the key to making this happen. It’s a shame your man couldn’t share his newfound wealth with you. I guess the saying is true about no honor among thieves.”

White rage coursing through his veins, Phinneas raised his gun to the Arab captain’s eye and pulled the trigger, ending the man’s amusement. A cloud of blood, skull, and brain fragments filled the air and floated away. The other soldiers stood in stunned silence for a few seconds.

Phinneas snatched the dead man’s gun and tossed it to Jonathan, and then ripped his knife from the scabbard at his waist and went to work. He slapped guns out of the marauders’ hands and slit their throats. Blood sprayed from their arteries, coating his face with tiny globules. He imagined with every slice that it was Zeric under his blade. He’d see to it the turncoat died a slow, roasting agony.

Cecilie’s screams snapped him out of his murdering zeal. The soldier who had her was running away, magnetic boots making rapid thuds along the metal floor toward the impacted Fulton. Phinneas turned to Jonathan.

“Shoot the bastard!”

“If I miss, I’ll hit her.”

Phinneas restrained the urge to punch him. “Then don’t miss. If they move that ship, we’re all dead!”

Jonathan brought up the rifle to his shoulder, but before he could fire, a bright flash and hum of electricity filled the room and turned the man holding Cecilie into so much ash. Cecilie screamed as she floated away like a useless fish, her bonds making her unable to grab onto anything to stop her ascent toward the Arab Fulton’s mouth. That’s when Phinneas saw the shooter. “What the bloody hell?”

A man hovered above them, wearing a mechanized suit with some sort of rocket booster strapped to the back. It crackled with electricity and blue arcs ran up and down it like lightning. Each arm boasted a dish-shaped appendage, which he used to pump lightning into the remaining soldiers as they attempted to take cover in their spacecraft. “This is my house!” he shouted. “Nobody waltzes onto my property without invite, unless they want to be vaporized.” Aside from the venting steam and the sound of the
Albatross
straining to stay upright around them, the bay had gone silent. The remaining inhabitants who hadn’t escaped gazed up at the metal figure.

Jonathan looked at Phinneas in wide-eyed wonder. “My God, that’s Nikola Tesla!”

Tesla looked unwell even for a spacer. From his gaunt face, the man must have weighed a hundred pounds if he weighed anything. His skin had gone a deep copper brown and he had only stringy patches of hair left on his head. The harsh environment had definitely taken its toll on his body, but his eyes crackled with a madness and vitality much like the lightning shooting out of that suit. After downing one more fleeing soldier with his lightning guns, Tesla put on his thrusters and went for the shrieking Cecilie, who was spinning up near the ceiling with her skirts billowing around her head.

The roar of Tesla’s reverse thrusters filled the bay as he brought Cecilie down to the deck. He slit her ropes with a blade mounted on the inside of one forearm. Jonathan swam through the air toward her like a drunken snake. Cecilie lunged forward and wrapped her arms around him. Phinneas sneered at them and looked away, but a second later, he felt a pair of warm lips on his cheek and a whisper of sweet breath in his ear.

“Thank you for saving me.”

Tesla watched the three of them from the deep hollows of his eye sockets. “I don’t know what sort of trouble you’re up to here, and I don’t want to know. It seems to me this lady’s got a price on her head, and this is no place for her.”

Jonathan stepped forward. “You’re right, Mr. Tesla. We came here to rescue her.”

Tesla’s eyes narrowed. “The three of you? Pardon me for saying, but you make a strange crew.”

“Yes, uh, well—”

Cecilie interrupted with smooth, practiced diplomatic grace. “What Mr. Orbital means is that Captain Greaves is a mercenary working for him to rescue me from these, um. . .” She swept her arm around at the dead soldiers and wreckage.

Tesla’s flat expression said he didn’t believe a word of it.

“Whatever the case, I hope you have a way out of here. As you can see from the stress on the main load-bearing structure, the
Albatross
isn’t much longer for this universe. It was a grand plan while it lasted, though.” He turned to go. Then he stopped, snapped his fingers, and turned back. “Ah yes. You’re a lot taller since the last time I saw you, Jonny.” He frowned and looked away, as if trying to grab something from his memory that was just out of reach. “I came up with a new idea for that train of your father’s. Tell him if he inverts the turbine manifold, cools it in an alcohol solution, and switches from direct to alternating current on the generators, he’ll gain a seventeen percent power increase while only suffering a six percent increase in fuel consumption.”

Jonathan stared for a moment before nodding. “Uh, yes sir, I’ll tell him. But don’t you want to come with us?”

Tesla’s smile lit up his haunted face, and for a second he looked a little less crazy. “I’m already home.”

The three looked after him as his suit lifted him off the floor, toward the upper deck where his living quarters must have been.

Phinneas had no time for sentimentality. “Where the hell is Gusarov?”

“Over here!” Gusarov shouted at them from the far end of the bay, where a lone Fulton was still docked. “Her boiler is hot, and she is stocked with enough fuel to get us where we need to go, at least if I fly her. It will be tight ride, though, so no touchy feely stuff.”

Phinneas turned to Jonathan. “We’ll settle our business during the flight and have the ship dock at Pinnacle Station. I’ll make my way from there.”

Jonathan gave a stiff nod and stuck out his hand. “Deal.” Phinneas shook it.

As they climbed into the airlock the lights in the
Albatross
flickered out for good. Soon after, the whole structure began to quake and shudder. The main support beam was giving way at last. Phinneas shut the hatch against the ensuing chaos, and tried to ignore the screams of the doomed inhabitants echoing in his head.

Once they squeezed into their seats and buckled in, Gusarov uncoupled from the airlock and fired the engines. “We are going to make fast go of it, so hang on.”

Phinneas closed his eyes and tried to make sense of the wreck his life had become and how he was going to get his ship and crew back. But most of all, he envisioned Zeric’s mutinous neck snapping in his hands.

The brass plate over the airlock door of the Fulton informed any who cared to read it that the ship was called
Swan Song
. Jonathan hoped the name wouldn’t prove to be a bad omen.

“
Bozhe moy,
she’s got cobbled-up controls,” shouted Gusarov from the pilot’s seat. “I’m going to need eight extra hands to fly her.”

“We haven’t got eight extra hands,” said Jonathan.

“Then you should move like you mean it,
da?
”

“What help do ye need most, Gusarov?” Phinneas asked.

“One of you go aft and start stoking boiler with coke. She is running underpowered. The radiators need to be cranked out. That is most crucial, but I am sure I will find more nasty surprises soon.” Gusarov hauled back on a brass lever and the boiler took on a sharper note.

The
Swan Song
’s thrust pushed them all aft. Jonathan showed Cecilie how to climb using the leather-wrapped cables stretched through the cabin. “Get up there by Gusarov,” he said. “Help him however you can. I’ll keep an eye on the pirate for you.”

Cecilie beamed. “I’m so glad you came to rescue me from that beastly man.”

“
Beastly man
, is it?” Phinneas laughed as he spun a wheel to extend one of the
Swan Song
’s radiator flaps. “Ye were singin’ quite a different tune on the stovepipe, lass.”

Jonathan blinked. “What’s he talking about?”

“Nothing.” Nevertheless, Cecilie flushed. She climbed up to the empty seat beside Gusarov and fussed with the brass buckles.

“Oh, she showed her true colors to me.” Phinneas moved to the next wheel and repeated the process. “She’s quite a devious wench. One worthy of a pirate, to be sure.”

Jonathan glared. “You shut your mouth, or I’ll shut it for you.”

“Less shouting, more shoveling,” said Gusarov. “I have no more than very tiny baby’s breath of steam pressure, and
Albatross
could go at any moment.”

Phinneas lowered his voice to a growl. “Ye heard the man. Get yer arse down to the burner.”

Jonathan grumbled, but still hurried down to the coke bins. He filled all the steel drawers with the grainy gray lumps and slid them into the furnace. “How’s that?”

“She is still barely making headway. You fellows get down to cargo hold and see what she is carrying. If we do not cut loose some dead weight, we will not make it hundred miles before bastards catch up with us.”

Jonathan joined Phinneas at the hatch to the cargo hold. “How will they know to chase after us?”

“Somebody knew we were aboard the
Albatross.
And they had the resources to mount a full-scale attack. Ye think they’ll just let us skate out beneath their noses? No, lad, they’ll have contingency plans.”

Right on cue, the
Swan Song
’s hull rang with an impact.

Jonathan and Phinneas looked at each other. “It can wait,” said Phinneas. “Someone’s shootin’ at us.” The two men hurried up the leather straps back to the command cabin.

“Christ on lame donkey!” shouted Gusarov. “I cannot see a thing. Get to scope, tell me what is going on,
devushka
. Is another ship?” Another bullet struck somewhere aft, making the boiler ring like a gong.

Cecilie fumbled with the brass periscope, trying to unlatch it. “
Je ne sais pas
. . . What do I do?”

Phinneas shoved her aside. She fell against a bulkhead with a scandalized expression. Jonathan helped her into a seat as Phinneas unlocked the periscope and lowered it down. He found the source of the gunfire right away.

“It’s not a ship, it’s one of the bedamned gun platforms. Pitch forward sixty degrees and roll ninety to starboard, Mr. Gusarov.”

“Who do you think you are giving orders to, Phinneas? I’m not your crewman.”

Without taking his eyes from the scope, Phinneas drew his pistol and pointed it at Gusarov. “Right now, ye’re exactly that, and if ye want to live as long as the rest of us, ye’ll do as I say.”

“For God’s sake, man, do it,” said Jonathan. “He captains a Fulton. He’s got to know what he’s doing.”

“
Da, da
. Stand by for maneuvering.” Gusarov worked the controls, cranking wheels around and shunting steam pressure through alternate routes.

The
Swan Song
began to nose downward, but not anywhere fast enough to suit her temporary captain. “Blast ye, Gusarov, I said pitch and roll!” shouted Phinneas. “That platform’s going to have our range any minute and then it won’t be bullets we’ll be takin’. It’ll be a rocket.”

“Maybe you would like to get out and push,
da
?” snarled Gusarov. “This is no hotboxed pirate schooner.
Swan Song
is freighter,
Capitan,
and she has fat ass.”

“Jonathan, isn’t there something we can do?” asked Cecilie.

He looked around the cabin and then grinned when he found a lever with a brass plate mounted above it on the bulkhead. It read:
Cargo Dump
. “Gusarov, I found the cargo release.”

“Good. We may get out of this alive yet. Yank it.”

“Wait, what if it’s tied down?” asked Jonathan.

“Do it,” said Phinneas. “Any mass we shed now will help.”

Jonathan pulled the lever. Steam pressure shunted through alternate lines to throw open the
Swan Song
’s belly. The ship vibrated with thumps as items battered the bulkheads on their way out into space. Everyone’s ears popped from the sudden change in air pressure, but the seals to the main deck held.

Another bullet struck the hull amidships. Jonathan started in surprise as he saw the blister raised on the inside wall from the impact. “Why the devil are they shooting at us?”

“Might be they think we are ones who attacked
Albatross
,” said Gusarov.

“More likely they’re Arabs who overran a gun platform with orders to shoot anyone tryin’ to escape,” said Phinneas from the periscope. “Cargo’s away. Looks like bags of some sort. Maybe concrete or lime.” He paused. “Damn it all. It’s flour.”

“So?” Jonathan wrestled to close the cargo dump lever. “Maybe they’ll knock a few bags open and the cloud will give us some cover.”

“Spacers do not see lot of grain,” said Gusarov. “Is weighty and expensive to bring into orbit, and you cannot grow it in pots like they do vegetables. That is one thing I do miss about Mother Earth. Bread. Fresh from stone oven, slathered with butter and marmalade.” He wiped his eye, then bellowed,
“Bozhe moy,
mal’chik
, why is hatch still open? These seals are not perfect, you know.”

“It’s stuck!” Jonathan gasped as he braced his feet against the bulkhead and threw his entire weight against the lever. It wouldn’t budge. Phinneas dropped down beside him from the periscope station to lend his weight to the stubborn lever. It still didn’t move even an inch.

Red-faced behind his dark coppery skin, Phinneas leaned back and wiped sweat beads from his forehead. “What in nine Hells did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything! I opened it just like Gusarov said to!” An idea struck Jonathan and he turned to find the bump where the bullet had struck. He felt it and it was icy cold. “I think I know what happened. The last shot to hit us must have severed a steam line and it’s frozen solid.”

Gusarov turned to look down at Jonathan and Phinneas. “He is right. One of gauges is showing zero pressure. I have some reasonable thrust now that we are free of cargo, and I am guessing we are out of range of anything except very lucky shot, so someone must go outside and crank bay shut by hand.” He throttled all the way back to zero thrust, letting the boiler cycle steam pressure through the idling circuit.

“Outside?
Dans l’espace?”
Cecilie chewed on her knuckles.

“Search ship. I do not believe this crew was so lax as to not have suits aboard.” Gusarov undid his straps and swung down to start checking storage space. “Look lively, comrades. I am fond of breathing and would like to keep at it for some time.”

Phinneas found the suits right away in a cabinet beside the airlock. He pulled one out, measured it against his arms and legs, and then started to climb inside.

“Wait, what are you doing?” asked Jonathan.

“Tryin’ to save our arses, Orbital.”

“Well . . . do you need help? How hard is it going to be to crank that bay shut by hand?” Two of the things he least wanted to do was help the pirate and float around outside a ship in open space, but life and death had a way of settling such matters.

Phinneas looked him up and down. “Ye wouldn’t be thinkin’ about doin’ anything dirty out there, would ye? Like tossin’ Cap’n Finn off into the Black?”

“Honestly, the thought never crossed my mind.” Well, perhaps not more than a brief flash. “All I care about right now is getting Cecilie safely back to her father.”

“Aye, we’ll have to talk about that, you and I. Afterward. Maybe Gusarov would be so bold as to assist me?” Phinneas cinched the suit’s belts tight around his gloves and boots, and slathered a coat of thick, gooey grease around the seams.

“Sorry,
Kapitan.
Somebody has to keep juggling steam pressure around busted line until bay is shut or else we will lose all our fuel. As smart as young
devushka
here seems to be, I doubt she has training.”

Jonathan picked up a suit and checked it against his arms and legs as he’d seen Phinneas do. Phinneas glared at him as he wound linen bandages over the grease and sealed them off with plumber’s tape. “Yer bloody serious. Damn fool. Ye’ll get yerself killed, and like as not all of us into the bargain.”

“Phinneas!” cried Cecilie. “
S’il vous plaît!
Jonathan is only trying to help. The least you could do is to be graceful about it. Can you even move the doors by yourself?”

“Blast it,” said Phinneas under his breath. “Women will be the death of us all, Orbital, mark my words. Get that other suit. Looks child sized. It’ll fit ye better.”

With the pirate captain’s help, Jonathan wedged his spare frame into the space suit. It smelled of sweat and rotting teeth, and he had to clench his teeth to keep from vomiting. At least he’d had nothing to eat for what felt like days. The suit was stuffy and uncomfortable, and he didn’t see how he’d be able to do anything with the thick gloves on, and said so to Phinneas.

“Ye’ll be glad of them soon enough. Yer fingers will feel like blocks of ice in minutes and ye’ll get frostbit in as little as half an hour. Sure ye want to do this?”

“I am.” Jonathan could see Cecilie’s approval in her eyes, and he didn’t want to appear cowardly in front of her.

“All right then. Once the bowl’s on, ye won’t hear me unless we touch helmets. Keep yer eyes open and look before you move. Men only make a single mistake in space. See that ye don’t make one that gets either of us killed today.”

Gusarov screwed Jonathan’s fishbowl helmet onto the collar of the suit and went through the steps of greasing, wrapping, and taping the seam. Jonathan’s breath sounded very loud in his ears and his nervous sweat made condensation form on the bowl’s interior. The valve in his collar that pumped fresh air into the helmet from the pack on his back made a little wheezing squeak with each breath. He exhaled into a mouthpiece like those worn by frogmen in the later stages of the Great War. Phinneas made eye contact, giving him a thumbs-up and a questioning glance. Jonathan nodded inside his helmet and forced his heavy glove into a thumbs-up of his own. This was insanity. Only a few days ago, he’d been barely holding off panic aboard a luxurious space train, and now he was about to be hanging on for dear life outside a leaky Fulton beyond the moon’s orbit, but there was no time for panic, not with Miss Renault counting on him. The two men entered the Fulton’s airlock and the last thing Jonathan saw before Gusarov shut it tight behind them was Cecilie’s concerned face.

A gauge on Jonathan’s wrist showed as the air pressure in the airlock drove downward. His suit seemed to bulge out in odd places as the air trapped within it equalized. He listened for any sounds of air leaking, but the suit held its pressure and his ears didn’t pop at all. Phinneas checked his own wrist gauge, and then cranked the wheel of the outer door and pulled it open.

Jonathan gasped in a mixture of terror and delight. He’d seen all these stars before from the safety and security of the CR, and on Pinnacle Station. Now nothing but a few feet of metal deck separated him from the entire universe, and it awed him. Phinneas touched him on the arm, startling him out of his reverie. The pirate captain ran a rope through two clips on Jonathan’s belt and attached the end to an eyelet on the airlock’s interior. He connected himself to the rope and then stepped out of the airlock onto the
Swan Song
’s hull. Jonathan followed; anxiety hummed in his bones, but he’d come this far. He wasn’t going to hide in the airlock and let Phinneas be the hero.

Earth was a giant blue orb just beyond the edge of the
Swan Song
, and the moon hung in space below and to his right. Jonathan lost all sense of which direction was up. His mind screamed at him that he was falling, and yet he could feel no motion at all, as if he existed within a daguerreotype. Phinneas played out the rope a few feet at a time as he moved across the hull. Jonathan stayed close and focused on his feet, making sure each one was well-planted against the iron hull before moving the other.