The Doomsday Vault

this was the first time she’d arrived as a prisoner. He wondered where the pirate ship had gotten to-and the pirates, for that matter.

As if in answer, a voice from below shouted, “Stone!”

Gavin’s heart jerked again, and he scrambled to the thin cover of the gunwale.

“Stone!” called the voice again, and Gavin recognized Captain Keene. “Bring that boy down now, you lazy fuck! The lady wants to have a look.”

Gavin risked a peek over the edge. The Juniper was anchored only a few feet above the hangar floor, lashed down with a series of guy ropes that ran through a complex system of gears and pulleys, which were, in turn, held down with flyweights and levers like those found backstage in a theater. Gavin could almost feel the ship straining against her bonds, longing to burst free and sail the clouds again. Several rope ladders trailed to the ground, and a loading ramp with a block and tackle mounted atop it had been rolled up, ready to unload cargo into Captain Keene’s pockets. Below, Captain Keene himself waited with his arms crossed. A dumpy woman in a simple dress and hat stood beside him. No doubt she owned the house Stone had mentioned. Both woman and captain were looking up.

“Stone!” Keene bellowed. “If I have to come up there, you’ll scrub decks for a month!”

Gavin realized he was holding his breath. Keeping low, he moved across the deck to the other side of the ship and found a guy rope that angled down to the ground. He slipped between a gap in the netting, wrapped his knees around the rope, then slid downward hand over hand. His arms and legs, weakened and stiff from weeks of inactivity, screamed murder at him, and his back joined in. Gavin ignored them. The tar coating made the rope a little slick. He was halfway down now, and picking up speed.

“He’d better not be playing with the merchandise,” said the woman on the far side of the ship. “You said the boy’s unspoiled, and I’m holding an auction for his first.”

“Don’t worry your little head,” Keene said. “Stone’s not that sort. He only has a soft spot for music, and he’s been making the boy play for him. Bugger thinks we don’t know.”

Gavin dropped to the ground and peered around the hull, which hovered a scant foot above the hangar floor. The captain and the woman stood between him and the huge hangar door. He might or might not be able to outrun Keene if the captain spotted him, but Keene would raise the alarm, and who knew how many other pirates might be sitting around outside? There were other exits from the hangar, though. All he had to do was-

“Who’s this, now?” A pair of hard hands grabbed him from behind. Gavin yelped with surprise and automatically elbowed the man in the stomach. The grip relaxed, allowing Gavin to wrench free. He caught a glimpse of white leather-a stolen leather jacket-before he fled. The man gasped once or twice, then bellowed for help.

No time to think. Legs and back afire, Gavin ran for the shadows at the hangar wall even as Keene bolted around the hull, followed by more pirates. They must have been stationed outside. Keene spotted him and shouted orders. Gavin reached the wall that housed the levers and flyweights. He yanked each lever, sending the weight stacks soaring. Each pull released a guy line holding the Juniper in place. Ropes snapped and hissed in the air like angry snakes. The pirates pounded toward him. Several bore glass cutlasses that gleamed in the dim light. Gavin pulled another lever, and a slashing rope caught a pirate full across the torso and swept him aside like a toy. He thudded against the Juniper’s hull and slid to the ground, his eyes glassy as his cutlass.

“The bastard got Billy!”

“You little shit!”

“Chop his hands off for real this time!”

The Juniper was now free of the ropes. She floated upward and bumbled against the smooth ceiling, probing hopefully for a way out. Gavin yanked a final lever, and with a clatter of gears, the enormous front door of the hangar ground open. A stiff, cold breeze whipped through the building, which had become a large tunnel. The wind pushed the ship away from Gavin, toward the opposite door, the one already open.

“No!” Keene shouted.

Gavin ran for it. Fiddle still strapped to his back, he bolted toward the pirates and, a prayer on his lips, he leapt with all his strength. One hand caught the trailing end of a rope ladder that dangled from the gunwale. He forced himself to grab a second rung with his other hand and pull himself higher until his feet found a perch just as the Juniper’s forward movement carried him over the pirates’ heads. The envelope slid across the hangar ceiling with a high-pitched noise that sounded like laughter. Gavin looked down at the startled and angry faces of the pirates as he coasted above them. Keene pulled a flechette pistol from his breast pocket and fired. The dart skimmed past Gavin’s shoulder.

“Shit!” Gavin swung on the ladder to make himself a more difficult target. Keene fired again and again, but the light was bad and the ship was picking up speed. Gavin caught a glimpse of the woman’s stark and startled face just before the Juniper cleared the hangar doors entirely and shot upward. A whoop of laughter burst from Gavin’s chest at the rush of movement, but in a split second he realized he wouldn’t be able to pilot or land the ship by himself. He made an instant decision and leapt off the ladder to the hangar roof the moment he came level with it, stumbling a bit but keeping his feet.

The Juniper soared upward into a cloudy sky, and Gavin watched her go with satisfaction. She might be recaptured, but in his mind, she would soar forever, gliding among the mists and the stars. People would tell stories about the ghost airship with the pirate chained inside her cargo hull. In any case, Keene wouldn’t have her.

Captain Keene and the pirate crew boiled out of the building. As Gavin hoped, Keene and the pirates seemed to assume Gavin was still on board the ship. Keene uselessly fired his flechette pistol at the diminishing Juniper, screaming incoherently about his lost cargo, his lost ship’s ransom, his lost reward. Gavin used the noise of Keene’s tantrum to cover the sound of his footsteps as he scuttled to the far side of the hangar roof and slid down a drainpipe. Almost instantly he became just another white-jacketed airman among the crowd of them running to see what all the fuss was about at this particular hangar. A few moments after that, he had made his way to the edge of the airfield, out of Keene’s sight and reach. The Juniper was a tiny speck high in the sky that eventually vanished into the clouds.

Gavin ducked behind another hangar, one among dozens, and paused to catch his breath. Now that he wasn’t in immediate danger, his legs had gone rubbery and the scars on his back burned again. He sat down with his head between his knees, wondering what the hell he was going to do now. An airmen or cabin boy who had been refused ransom was considered worthless. It didn’t matter that the pirate attack wasn’t Gavin’s fault or that the Boston Shipping and Mail Company’s refusal to ransom him had nothing to do with Gavin’s ability and everything to do with money. All that mattered was that Gavin was an unransomed cabin boy. No one would hire him.

He could take a false name, lie about his age, and apply for work as an airman on a different ship, but that option offered little hope as well. Word traveled fast among airmen. By now, everyone knew or would soon know that Gavin Ennock, cabin boy for the Juniper, hadn’t made ransom in London, and his reputation, however unfairly, was already ruined. A “new” airman who nosed around the city looking for work would be painfully obvious. Gavin’s only option was to somehow earn enough money to buy passage back to America and beg a job on another Boston Shipping and Mail airship. BSMC knew it wasn’t his fault he’d lost his position, and he technically still worked for them, anyway. He just needed another ship.

Gavin breathed hard. How would he earn that kind of money? The only trade he knew floated high in the air above him, untouchable as a star.

Sorrow for his friends from the Juniper crashed over him, and the realization that he would probably never play for Old Graf again forced a choked sound from his throat. He swallowed hard and swiped at his eyes. He wasn’t going to cry. Not down here, in the dirt and mud of the airfield. He wouldn’t give Keene the satisfaction. Besides, he had his life; he had his freedom; he had his fiddle. He was in much better shape now than he had been an hour ago.

So get to your feet and do something to help yourself, he told himself. No one else will do it for you.

Gavin got to his feet, shifted his fiddle case on his back, and trotted down to the rail line that ran between Wellesley Field and London proper. He knew from previous Beefeater runs that a train ran every ten minutes on the dot, shuttling passengers and airmen to and from the city. Airmen, identifiable by their white leathers, rode free.