Clementine (The Clockwork Century 1.10)

“Of course I’m sure. ”

“How far out?” Simeon asked. He adjusted his position so that he could reach the important levers and pertinent buttons, readying himself for the surge of speed that Hainey was mere moments away from ordering.

“Couple of miles?” the captain guessed. “And open sky, no weather to account for. ” He snapped the scope back to its smaller size and jammed it into his front breast pocket.

Lamar shook his head, not arguing but wondering. “They’ve been moving so slow. No wonder they had to set down out here. ”

Simeon removed his goggles and set them atop his head, where their strap strained against the rolled stacks of his roughly braided hair. “They’ve never gotten any speed beneath them,” he said, the island drawl stretching his words into an accusation.

Hainey knew, and it worried him, but this was his chance to gain real ground. The Free Crow, which Brink had renamed the Clementine, had once been a Confederate war dirigible and she was capable of tremendous speed when piloted properly. But she’d been flying as if she were crippled and it meant one of two things: Either she was critically damaged, or she was so heavily laden that she could barely maintain a good cruising altitude.

Her true and proper captain hoped for the latter, but he knew that her theft had been a violent event, and

he didn’t have the faintest clue what she carried. It was difficult not to fear the worst.

Only a significant head start had prevented Hainey from retrieving her so far, and here she was—having dragged herself across the sky, limping more than sailing, and now she was stopped within a proverbial spitting distance.

“Simeon,” he said, and he didn’t need to finish.

The Jamaican was already pulling the fuel release valves and flipping the switches to power up the boosters. “Fifteen seconds to fire,” he said, meaning that the three men had that long to secure themselves before the jolt of the steam-driven back-up tanks would shoot the dirigible forward.

Lamar buckled his skinny brown body into a slot against the wall, within easy reach of the engine room. Hainey sat back down in the captain’s seat and pulled his harness tight across his chest; Simeon used his last five seconds to light one of the hand-rolled cigarettes he kept in a tin that was bolted onto the ship’s console.

At the end of the prescribed time, the unnamed airship lurched forward, snapping against the hydrogen tank that held it aloft and leaping in a back-and-forth motion until the tank and the engines found their rhythm, and the craft moved smoothly, and swiftly. Hainey didn’t much like his temporary vessel, but he had to give it credit—it was fast, and it was light enough to soar when necessary.

“What are we…” Lamar said from his seat on the wall, then he swallowed and started again. “What will we do when we catch them?”

The captain pretended he hadn’t given it much thought. He declared, “We’re going to kill the sons of bitches and take our ship back. ” But it would be more complicated than that, and he didn’t really know what he’d find when the ships and their crews had a chance to collide.

He’d been weighing the pros, cons, and possibilities since leaving Seattle.

The Free Crow was heavily reinforced, but heavily powered to compensate for its armor. It was a juggernaut of a machine, but if Hainey had learned one thing from following the bird over a thousand miles, he’d learned that Brink’s crew did not yet know what the Free Crow was capable of. The ship was barely flying without knocking into mountains and mowing down trees.

The unnamed craft that hauled Hainey and his two most indispensable crew members was no physical match for the Free Crow, and this was no secret. Likewise, Hainey had reason to believe that Brink’s crew outnumbered his own by three or four men, and maybe more.

In retrospect, he might’ve been better served to buy a bigger interim vessel and cobble together a thicker crew; but at the time, speed had been the more pressing priority and anyway, if he’d taken all afternoon to go shopping for the perfect pursuit vehicle, they’d never be this close to catching Brink now.

Lamar grumbled something from the engine room door.

“What was that?” Hainey asked.

“I said, I was thinking maybe we should’ve brought an extra warm body or two. ”

And the captain said, “Sure, but where would we have put ’im?”

“Point taken, sir. ”

Simeon, who never took his eyes off the growing black dot of the Free Crow, said, “He’s wishing we’d brought that Chinaman Fang, at least. Captain Cly might’ve let him join us, if you asked him nice. ”

Hainey knew that much already, so he nodded, but didn’t reply except to say, “The three of us will be plenty of man to take back our bird. Fang’s good at what he does,” he agreed. “A good man to have on board, that’s for damn sure. But we’ve got the Rattler. Lamar, why don’t you unhook yourself and make sure it’s ready to bite. ”

“Yessir,” the engineer said. He unfastened himself from the wall and, swaying back and forth to keep his balance, he grasped the edge of the engine room door to swing himself inside. The unnamed ship had a small cargo hold, but it was affixed beneath the cabin—and Hainey had insisted on keeping the Rattler within easier reach.

“Less than a mile out,” Simeon announced calmly.

“Lamar! Get that thing on deck!” Hainey ordered.

Lamar struggled with a crate, scooting it jerkily across the tilting, lilting floor. “Right here, sir. ”