Clementine

Maria faltered, but not much, and not for long. “Maybe not, but I know plenty about what happens to a man when a bullet sticks between his ribs, and if you don’t want the knowledge firsthand yourself, you’d better set your weapons aside.”

“You see,” he said as if he hadn’t heard her, “We’re surrounded by hydrogen-three quarters of this craft is designed to hold it, and this bird is all full up right now. Do you know what happens when you start firing bullets around hydrogen?”

He could see by her eyes that she could guess, but she was unconvinced. “Those men outside have been firing at you for fully five minutes now. Nothing has exploded yet.”

“This is a warbird, lady. It’s armored on the outside, to the hilt. Inside, everything is exposed-there’s not much to protect the interior from the tanks, because ordinarily, the people who hang around in the bridge know better than to yank out their guns and make threats. And did you notice,” he added, because the clouds that covered her face were unhappy with understanding, “how careful they were? All those men down there-all those guns. Between them, they didn’t fire twenty shots total. Do you know why?”

She hesitated, then said slowly, “The other dirigibles.”

“That’s right,” he confirmed. “The other dirigibles. No armor. Not like this bird.” He kicked at the floor, which rang metallically under his feet. “One bullet and they could be blown sky-high.”

“What about that…that…” a word dawned on her, and she used it. “That Rattler? You could’ve set off a chain reaction, killed hundreds of people instead of merely the ten or twenty you’ve otherwise dispatched.”

He shrugged. “I was lucky, and they weren’t. And my men were all right, inside this bird. Even if the yard blew sky-high around it, and this bird took enough damage that it’d never fly again…they’d have made it out alive. And now that I can tell, just by looking at you, that you have a fair understanding of our mutual peril, it looks like we’re at a bit of an impasse.”

“We’re at no impasse. You’re going to disarm and I’m going to hand you over to…to the authorities,” she argued.

The captain sneered. “And which authorities might those be? Your old Rebs? I heard they threw you away. You want to barter me,” he said. “You want to bring them the last of the Macon Madmen, that’s it, isn’t it? Well. I’ll let you send the lot of us to hell before I’ll let you do that,” he said. He pulled his small firearm from the holster around his hips, and he aimed it right back at her.

“You’re a madman, sure enough,” she breathed, but she didn’t sound particularly frightened.

“I believe we established that.”

“I don’t want to kill you, or your crew, or anyone else down there. And I’d prefer not to die today, if I can arrange for it.” But she didn’t lower her gun, and the barrel didn’t display even the faintest quiver of uncertainty. She was buying herself time to think, that was all.

“Then we’ve got ourselves a problem,” Hainey told her. “What would you like for us to do? Open the bay door and let you go back down? You think they’d let a lady leave, just like that-or do you think that the moment we crack the door they’re going to fire up inside this thing just as fast as can be?”

“But you said…the hydrogen…”

“Look at them out there,” he told her, using his gun to briefly point at the windshield, and the sheriff, and the deputies, and the reassembled gathering that was picking up the wounded and the dead, and hauling them away. “They’re losing their reason. You know what that is, out there? I bet you don’t, Belle Boyd, but I do, as plain as I know you’re too smart to shoot. That out there…that’s not a crowd.”

“It’s not?”

“No. It’s a mob. And it doesn’t have half the brains of two men together, and they are going to kill anybody who tries to come out of this bird, lickity-split. So here’s what’s going to happen now,” he said, and he changed his mind, and put the gun back in its holster instead of pointing it at the woman in the doorway. “Me and my men are going to lift this Valkyrie up, fly her off, and if you don’t make any trouble for us, maybe we’ll set you down safe.”

“How chivalrous of you.”

“We’re gentlemen through and through, we are.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said. Her gun didn’t believe them either.

Outside, hands and hammers were beating against the Valkyrie’s hull, hoping to pull it apart a piece at a time if it couldn’t be breached. Hainey heard this, even through the buzzing in his ears, and he said to the spy, “Call it professional courtesy if you want, or merely my personal desire to surprise you. But if we don’t move this ship somewhere else, and fast, not a one of us is walking away from it. Do you understand me?”

He nodded his head at Simeon, then at Lamar, who cautiously stepped away from him and went to the consoles where they might best make themselves useful. Hainey said, “Keep your gun out if you want, I don’t give a damn.”

“You don’t?”

“No, I don’t. Because now you know you’ll die down here with us, if you don’t let us fly. And once we’re in the air, you’ll die if you cut down any given one of us. So keep your gun out, lady, if that’s what makes you feel better. Leave it out, and leave it pointed at me, if you please. I don’t mind it, but I think it makes my crewmen nervous-and nervous crewmen can’t steer worth a damn.”

8. OUR PLAYERS ARE COMPELLED TO COLLABORATE

Hainey swung himself into the captain’s chair and snarled when a hail of bullets struck the windshield-chipping it here and nicking it there, but barely scratching the foot-thick swath of polished glass. He found the thruster pedal and pumped it with his foot while his hand searched all the logical spots for a starter switch. His fingers fumbled across the console, feeling into the nooks and slots where such switches tended to be located, and finally he found a red lever so he pulled it, and the burners fired at top power, and top volume.

Behind the dirigible someone who had been standing too close to the engine mounts screamed and probably died as the craft howled violently to life.

Simeon adjusted himself in the first mate’s chair and reached overhead for the steering and undocking levers; he tested the former and yanked hard on the latter, and somewhere beyond their hearing a hydraulic clasp unfastened and began to retreat into the body of the ship.

Lamar busied himself by bounding back and forth between two secondary crewmen’s chairs, adjusting settings and turning dials, and the captain asked him, “We ready to fly?” to which the engineer said, “As ready as we’re going to get.” And he cast Maria Boyd an anxious glance.

She held her position by the crew quarters door, but her gun was at her side now and she caught him looking at her, she met his stare without a waver. But no one had time to stare, really. On the Valkyrie’s underbelly men were taking kerosene torches to task, trying to find a place to cut where the metal would split enough to do damage. And the hammers were joined by crowbars, and by pipes, and by anything else hard and reckless, and the sound against the hull was like hail.

Maria said, “They really will kill us all, won’t they?”

And Hainey replied without taking his eyes off the console, “Sure enough. They’ll never give you the five minutes you’d need to explain yourself; they’ll pull you out of the bird and pound you flat, just for being inside it in the first place. Now take yourself a seat.”

“Is that an order, Captain?”

He said, “It’s a suggestion you’d be wise to heed. We’ve never flown a bird this big before, and it might get rough.”

“You’re asking me to trust you enough to quit holding you at gunpoint.”

Before Lamar had time to point out that she’d already lowered her weapon, the captain said, “No, I’m asking you to trust that we’re too busy to pay you any attention.”