Tin Swift

“Let’s see,” Hink said. “How does this story end? I’d say it ends with General Saint’s spy, Les Mullins, getting killed on the floor of a shack in the Bitterroots unless he tells a man named Captain Hink just who, exactly, he’s working for and what, exactly, that man wants.”

Mullins had gone from bleeding to wheezing. His good hand was pressed over the chest wound as if he could hold the blood inside. Looked like he thought he could hold the words inside too. But Hink would get them out of him. He’d done worse to better men.

“I’ll give you a moment to consider my request, Mr. Mullins. Because this is the last time I’m asking you to give me answers. From here on out, I’ll just be doing an awful lot of painful taking them from you.”

Hink turned back to his desk and took a drink of coffee. His hands shook from a hard anger.

George Rucker had been a friend. The younger brother of William Rucker, a man Hink served with, and had been unable to save from Alabaster Saint’s bloodthirsty loyalists.

Hink had come too late to stop William’s hanging, but he’d found young George Rucker and taken him in. Looked after him as best he could, even while carrying out the president’s orders. Because Mullins was right about that. That tin star was his. He was Marshal Hink Cage when he wasn’t wedged up here with glim pirates, trying to suss out the kingpin of their black market trade.

He’d given that star to George Rucker for safekeeping and as a promise that he would return from this mission to retrieve it from him.

A promise he couldn’t keep now because of Les Mullins. A promise that had gotten George Rucker killed.

A shot rang out and the high steam whine of engines catching hot pounded the air. Not just engines. The Swift’s engines.

“Captain Hink!” A woman yelled from a good ways off. “The ship. They’re on her!”

The gunshot boomed out again, louder. That was the Swift’s cannon.

Hink grabbed the map off the table and his shotgun, which had been leaning against the wall. Seldom already had one foot out the door. Hink gave half a second’s thought about taking the time, and wasting the bullet, to kill Mullins.

Decided the man wasn’t near enough worth either and was halfway down the road to dead anyhow.

He pushed through the canvas and squinted at the onslaught of harsh afternoon light.

There was enough of a tumble of rock and scree on this outcropping that the Swift could land and lash, but not so much that any ship bigger than her—and that meant every other ship in the range— could catch hold.

He’d chosen this spot for just that reason.

Mr. Seldom ran quick as a gangly jackrabbit over rock and around wind-twisted scrub toward where the Swift hovered, just so high above the ground that a man couldn’t catch her ropes with a jump. Not that she had any of her ropes dangling.

Built like a bullet, the Swift was one of the smallest airships that carved the sky. Outfitted with the biggest boilers she could bear, she had more power per pound than the North’s battle cruisers. She carried a crew of twelve, if needed, and enough water, coal, wood, and glim to get her an eight-hundred-mile range.

But the thing that gave her the edge over bigger, more powerful ships was her skeleton. She was made of tin, which lightened her load considerably and made her sing like crystal glass tapped by a spoon when she hit the cold upper.

All who heard that siren song knew it was the Swift. Wasn’t a ship that could launch into the storm as quick as she could, wasn’t a ship that could ride it out better, wasn’t a ship that could fly as fast and true.

Which was all that was saving her tin hide at the moment.

The Swift hovered above the heads of two dozen men and women who were unloading shotguns at her belly.

“Get her up, get her up!” Hink yelled. “Who’s at the helm?” He ran up alongside Molly Gregor, his boilerman, who had just a moment before hollered him out of the shack.

Molly was a solid-built woman with curves in all the right places and a crop of straight black hair that she shaved short at the temples so as not to queer her breathing gear. He’d never seen her wear a dress a single day in the three years they’d been running glim together.

But even though she had boots, breeches, and a hell of a hand at steam tinkering, there wasn’t a man who’d disrespect her. Not if he wanted to wake up breathing the next day.

“It’s Guffin,” she said, pounding across the rocks beside him. “He was on watch. Checking on that squall headed in from the north.”

They were almost upon the mob beneath the ship now.

Molly pulled the nozzle of the flamethrower she had strapped across her back around to the front and struck a match. The slow-burning wick spring-hinged below the tip of the nozzle caught fire. Molly twisted the valve at her belt, readying the mix of oils she’d rigged up to throw a burn a hundred feet.

“Don’t set her aflame,” Captain Hink said. “And don’t burn me neither.”

Molly didn’t waste her breath on an answer. She rushed past him, clearing a path to the rear of the Swift with another blast of fire.

Hink pulled his gun and rushed into the crowd, headed for Jonas Hamilton, the bootlicker who was yelling orders to take the Swift down.

“Hamilton, you horse’s ass!” Hink yelled. “Get away from my ship.”

Hamilton turned. He had a goosed-up Sharps Carbine tucked at his shoulder and took aim straight at Hink’s chest.

“Damn it all.” Hink raised his pistol and shot Hamilton in the shoulder, just above the butt of the carbine.

Hamilton reeled back, his shot clipping high, but still close enough that Hink heard the buzz of it as it passed his ear.

An explosion pounded rock walls and eardrums alike, and damn near threw Hink to the ground. He stumbled, kept hold of the pistol, trying to see his way through the thick black smoke that filled the air. That smoke better not be from the Swift going down, or he’d be skinning these rock rats until doomsday.

A hand reached down out of the smoke and caught hold of his arm and yanked him up hard.

“Rope!” Seldom hollered. The Irish was dangling from the Swift’s ladder by one foot and two fingers, looking like a squirrel ready to jump a limb. Since his other hand was helping drag Hink up to catch hold of the ladder, Hink was more than happy to see him.

The smoke was still thick enough it burned his eyes, but the Swift was already climbing again. Hink could just make out ragged shadows of those below him picking themselves up from that blast. It wouldn’t be long before those guns in their hands were aimed at his head.

“Where’s Molly?” Hink yelled over the roar of the ship’s fans.

“Boiler,” Seldom said as he scurried uncommonly quick up the last of the rope.

Captain Hink put one hand over the other and hauled up the ladder as fast as he could. His crewmen heaved the ladder up while he climbed. Just as he breached the hold and pulled himself into the solid interior of the Swift, he heard Molly call out. “Get her up, Mr. Guffin! Get her up fast and hard!”

“He don’t know any other way,” Seldom muttered.

Hink laughed as the floor tipped alarmingly to one side. He pushed up off his hands and knees and staggered toward the helm.

The Swift’s engines popped three hard thumps of steam and power, the awe- inspiring noise of that beautiful steam engine drowning out the crowd and gunfire below, as she took aim for the clouds and let fly.

CHAPTER THREE