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.