She wiggled her fingers on the throttle. “Fine, sir.”
They sat together in silence, staring out into the darkness below the wide curve of the gas envelope. Grassy hills and swaying trees slid past them to port while the distant glitter of moonlit waves to starboard revealed the Atlanteen Ocean churning and foaming from the shore out to the end of the world. When his eyes finally adjusted, Syfax picked out the pale line of the railway snaking along the coast and the flickers of light in cottage windows on the slopes above the beaches. Small fishing boats dotted the sands, their mooring lines stretching up to the rocks. A few clouds hid patches of stars, but he could see well enough to tell that the Crake was nowhere in sight.
Less than an hour passed before the doctor thumped up behind them and sniffed loudly. Evander wiped at the stains on his fingers with a filthy rag. “I’ve done all I can for the moment. He’ll live, for a while at least. How long, I can’t say. In a hospital, maybe a few weeks. Here?” The doctor shrugged. “I gave him something for the pain.”
Taziri looked back. “He’s not in any pain?”
“I didn’t say that.” Evander smirked. “He’s conscious, more or less. You can try talking to him, for what it’s worth.”
“Thanks, doc.” Syfax stepped back into the cabin. Hamuy’s good eye wasn’t quite open, his breathing was quick and shallow, and his fingers were trembling. As Syfax knelt down, he pressed his palm against his prisoner’s chest. “Medur Hamuy, I’m Major Zidane.”
The man grunted. “Redcoat.” His voice was all phlegm and gravel.
“That’s right. I bet you don’t like Redcoats, do you?”
“Don’t like any of the queen’s dogs. Least of all you, Zidane. I heard about you. What the hell are you doing in that coat? Not enough girls ordering you around in the army?” Medur grinned, and then suddenly screamed, his bloodshot eyes bulging from their sockets and he twisted to stare at his right hand.
“Kenan.” Syfax glanced over his shoulder. “Watch where you’re stepping.”
“Sorry, sir.” The corporal removed his boot from Medur’s bandaged fingers and grinned sheepishly. “I guess I wasn’t looking.”
Did he do that on purpose? I still can’t tell if this kid’s a goofball or a serious player. Syfax turned his attention back to the man on the floor. “Now, Medur, tell me about what happened tonight. The train station. The airfield. You gone all pastoral now? Down with the machine menace and all that?”
“What do you think, Zidane?” Hamuy stared dully at the ceiling, wheezing. “It was a job. A little fire, a little wet work. Easy money.”
“Not easy enough. You should see your face,” Syfax said. “You killed a dozen civilians and put three dozen more in the hospital. All the trains are stuck behind a pile of twisted steel and only this airship survived. Who paid you? Ambassador Chaou? What was the big plan?”
“Yeah, she paid me. Not enough for this shit though.” Hamuy coughed, his whole body convulsing with each hack and gasp. “I dunno what her plan was, but my plan was to get away and get paid. Didn’t plan to get roasted.”
“Nah, I guess not.” Syfax watched the man’s trembling fingers. How much of this is an act? How dangerous is he still? Well, if the reports from Numidia are anything to go by, pretty dangerous. Syfax considered the thin cords wrapped around Hamuy’s wrists. “Tell you what. How’s about we get you into something less comfortable?” He tugged a pair of steel handcuffs from his coat pocket. “Doc, stand back. Kenan, roll him over. Lieutenant Ohana?”
She looked up at him in the mirror by her head. “Major?”
“We could use a hand back here.” Syfax pointed at the man under his knee.
Taziri took her time extracting herself from the pilot’s seat and stepping back into the cabin. She said, “I should really stay at the controls.”
“I’m just switching his cords for cuffs. It’ll only take a second.” Syfax leaned back. “Kenan?”
Kenan grabbed the prisoner’s arm and flipped him over to lie face down. The corporal leaned forward, putting his full weight on Hamuy’s shoulders. The prisoner grunted and coughed. “Ready here, sir.”
Syfax yanked Hamuy’s hands up and pulled a thick bladed knife from his belt. “Ohana, sit on his legs.”
Taziri nodded and pinned Hamuy’s feet to the floor. “Okay.”
Syfax cut away the cords to reveal two bruised wrists. In that same instant, the legs beneath Taziri’s knee snapped up and she toppled forward into Syfax and the two fell over onto Kenan. Hamuy bucked at the waist and again at the knees, flopping like a fish on the deck while two men and a woman scrambled and tumbled on his head and back. It only took him a moment to get his hands under him and the prisoner surged up from beneath all three of his jailers, roaring. Syfax shoved Taziri toward the back of the cabin as he stood up and buried his fist in Hamuy’s stomach. The burned man folded, but grabbed the major’s coat to hold himself up. He swung at Syfax’s head, but Syfax grabbed the fist in midair and twisted it around behind Hamuy’s back. The prisoner screamed and Syfax felt the sickening crustiness of the man’s burned flesh sliding between his fingers. He slapped his other hand across Hamuy’s forehead and bent his head back, baring his burnt throat.
The major was just thinking it might be time to back off when Taziri yanked a wrench off the engineer’s console and smashed it across Hamuy’s jaw. The force of the blow sent Taziri stumbling across the cabin as Hamuy dropped to the deck in a heap of twisted, bloody limbs. Syfax let him fall and in the seconds that followed all he could hear were three people gasping for breath.
“Ohana.” Syfax wiped his hand on his coat. “You almost killed my prisoner.”
Taziri turned to stare up at him. “That’s unfortunate, sir.”
She’s still in revenge mode. That’s the last thing I need. “You mean it’s unfortunate that he almost died, or that he didn’t quite die?” Syfax knelt down and cuffed Hamuy’s hands behind his back. “Get back in the cockpit, lieutenant.”
She went back to her seat in silence. Syfax made sure Kenan still had his head on straight and left him to guard the unconscious prisoner. With Evander lying across the upholstered bench at the back of the cabin and snoring violently, Syfax found a shortage of seats so he went back up to sit in the engineer’s chair.
Hours passed. The ship shuddered, the engines droned, and the clouds parted to reveal a sea of stars ahead, as much as could be seen around the edge of the gas envelope. The landscape below offered only dim and ragged shapes that might be trees and snaking lines that might be roads. The ghostly outlines of Zili and Lixus came and went, along with other smaller fishing villages. And from time to time, they would pass over the tiny blue light of a marker tower leading the way south along the coast.
“What’s that?”
Syfax looked back and saw a sleepy-eyed Evander kneeling on the padded bench and pressing his face to the window. “That right there. That light. What is that?”
Syfax leaned across the cockpit to peer at the dull orange glow on the ground. It flickered once, twice. “A fire. A big one.”
Chapter 3. Taziri
Ever so gently, Taziri eased the Halcyon to port to pass over the wavering firelight blazing half a mile from the coast line. As they came closer, Syfax stuck his large shaven head into the cockpit beside her and said, “Take us down. I wanna check that out.”
She frowned behind her scarf. With each passing second, the shadowy shapes on the ground became more distinct and suddenly she recognized the broken lines of an airship gondola on the hillside. “Major, I’d rather not get too close. I can’t see the ground clearly and there could be trees.” Taziri began easing back the throttles. “Maybe we should come back in the morning.”
He looked sharply at her. “Not a chance. If that’s the Crake, then the ambassador can’t be far away. Land the ship, Ohana.”
Taziri nodded. “Yes, sir.” She worked the pedals and the throttle, and after a quarter hour of gently sinking down over the rocky slope, she flipped the propellers over and pinned the airship to the ground. There weren’t any trees nearby but she did see several jagged stones poking up from the earth, large enough to pierce a gondola deck by several feet. She stared at one particularly sharp rock a few yards to her left. “If the wind picks up, we’re going to slide around on this gravel, sir, and that would be a very bad thing.”
