Tin Swift

make sense. If she was trying to move out of the way of the storm, all she needed was a place to hold up—a difficult proposition with a ship her size—or land. And either of those options would be found at lower elevations.

Why would she ride the ridge?

A flash of yellow bloomed out the side of the Black Sledge and swept across the peaks below them. Then another flash, and another, like beams of sunlight bursting through the clouds.

Mirrors. Goddamn it all, she had mirrors.

She wasn’t hopping the peaks, she was scraping the sky and hills with light. Looking for a flash, looking for a reflection off something metal.

Like, say, a tin ship.

“Back and up!” Hink ordered.

Guffin and Seldom scrambled to work the controls, and the Swift jumped to obey. But it was too late. A wide swath of light, bright and hot as summer off a river, swept across the clouds they’d been holding to, and near as much blinded Hink, even through his goggles.

“Son of a mule!” he swore.

Run or fight? The world seemed to pause for a second, to slip away and slow as he thought through the possibilities, spinning through his mind.

The Sledge outgunned them, outpowered them. It would be a dead man’s gamble to take her on. The Swift could outrun her, but running wouldn’t answer his questions. Why was Alabaster Saint suddenly going so out of his way to kill him? Who was working for the general, and how deep into the western glim trade had Alabaster entrenched himself?

Answers to all of that might be a thing of national security. There’d been talks of uprisings since the war. There’d been talks of the west, with her mountains and glim defecting from the east with her money and matics. Talks the president was keenly interested in getting to the bottom of.

And on most all of those rumors, Hink had heard General Alabaster Saint’s name traded, hand to hand, like coin of the realm. Whatever plans were being made out here in the west, he was fair certain the Saint was a part of them.

“Hellfire,” Hink swore, having made up his mind before the mirror’s light had reached the tail fin. “Take her on!”

They dove for the Black Sledge, pounding sky to beat the devil.

The Black Sledge angled up, catching a hard tailwind. Not so much making a run for it as getting up and into more maneuverable sky to avoid being rammed into the ragged cliffs.

“Watch her guns,” Hink said. “Seldom, ready the hook and torch.”

Guffin pulled his breathing gear off his mouth. “We’re boarding her?” He didn’t sound so much worried as maybe a little too excited about the prospect of dangling feet in thin air.

“We’re taking her down,” Hink said.

The racket of the fans pushing the Swift drowned out anything else. Hink fought the controls, pushed by crosswinds and updrafts as he gave her full throttle to ram that black bag of air.

Their only chance was speed.

Good thing speed was what the Swift had by the bucketloads.

The ship’s frame screeched under the strain of the dive, her tin bones singing out like a hundred wet fingers over fine crystal.

The ship vibrated with the sound of it, the song of it. A rise of pride, of power, of fearless joy swelled Hink’s chest. He ripped off his breathing gear and let out a whoop and holler. Mr. Lum’s deep laughter rolled through the cabin.

The Black Sledge yawed to the side, slinging around hard to show the guns that prickled a line down the length of her.

“Ready, Mr. Seldom?” Hink yelled.

“Aye, Captain!” The Irishman set a hook from his belt to the mid-bar above his head, stomped his feet into the floor belts, then opened the starboard rear door.

The gust of wind that rattled the inside of the ship set her to shaking and would have stirred up anything not tied down, but Hink, Guffin, and Lum were hooked tight to the framework by belts at their waist and braces over their boots.

The blast of a cannon pounded the air like a giant clapping the Swift between his hands. The port rear fan sputtered before picking up to plumb again.

Hink kept the throttle full open. The window filled with the Black Sledge. He could see every stitch and rivet on the big old barge.

The Swift screamed out her killing song as the engine pumped thunder and power into her bones. The repercussions of another cannon shot—this one wide—cracked through the air.

Closer. So close, Hink could jump the door and land on the Black Sledge’s wing, if he wanted.

“Now!” he yelled to Mr. Seldom. But even as the word left his lips, Mr. Seldom had already let loose the flaming hook.

Guffin got himself settled in to see how many swear words he could fit in a breath as he, Hink, and Lum fought the controls to pull the Swift up out of her suicide dive.

The wind gave them hell, but just as Hink was thinking it was time to tell the crew to kiss their boots good- bye, the breeze shifted and nudged the Swift’s tail, giving her the air she needed. The Swift scraped over the top of the Black Sledge, leaving more than a little dust behind.

“Seldom?” Hink called out.

“Dead on, Captain,” Seldom yelled.

And then as if in response, the Black Sledge shuddered and rocked as she fell away beneath them. A gout of flame took up the port side of her—Seldom’s torch hitting dry tinder. They’d go up in a flame if they didn’t dump water to put out the fire. Of course, without enough water, there’d be no steam to keep her up or put her down soft. Especially not with a storm looming.

The way Hink reckoned it, Captain Barlow had himself a handful of hard decisions to make right about now.

And otherwise occupied was just how Hink liked the crew of the ships he was about to board.

“Guffin. The wheel,” Hink said.

Guffin jammed a staypin in the controls, unlatched his belt line, and with one hand on the overhead bars made his way across the ship to the helm.

Once there, Hink unlatched and left the wheel in Guffin’s hands, not waiting to see if he had latched the harness to the interior framework of the ship or kicked boots into the straps.

Hink caught at the framework as he ran to the door Seldom was manning.

“Give me as long as you can,” Hink said.

Seldom nodded. “Always do.”

Hink unlatched his breathing gear, dragging the scarf at his neck up over his nose, and buttoned it to the leather lining at the edge of his goggles. This high, the cold could freeze a man’s face right off.

Seldom unplugged Hink’s hose, then latched around Hink’s torso the harness that would haul him home. He handed Hink the three-hooks, two rakelike handles with metal barbs at one end and leather cuffs at the other. Hink buckled the cuffs around his wrists and gripped the handles.

“Keep her up, boys!” he yelled. Then Captain Hink stepped out the door and into the brace of wind.

The fall was fast, hard, and at the same time seemed to take forever. Wind blasted his eyes, face, and near tore off his clothes. The Black Sledge was just a few stories below him, and if he hit it right, the netting that covered her canvas would be plenty enough for him to catch on to.

Captain Hink hit the ship and swung the hooks in both his hands, which did a hell of a job of tangling up with the ropes.

He grunted in pain as his shoulders bore the weight of his landing and his arms nearly ripped from their sockets. It took him a second to breathe air back into his lungs and shake the dizzy out of his head. Then he was