Free-Wrench, no. 1 (19 page)

“You let me know the instant you see or hear
something besides the wind, you understand?” Captain Mack said.

Tap.

“Good. You see us through this, and you just
might still have a place in this crew.”

Wink twitched his batlike ears and angled
them, then drummed his claws and pointed. The captain squinted.
Just barely visible in the indicated direction glowed similar ship
lights. He leaned low and spoke into the communication tube.

“We’re getting close. If you aren’t in the
gig room, get there. I’m going to drop you off due south of the
warehouse district. When you’ve got as much as you’re going to get,
send up one of the flares. I’ll bring the
Wind Breaker
in
and we’ll hightail it, but be ready to load in a hurry. Glinda and
the traitor will stay with me to man the ship.”

“How do we know we’re almost there, Cap’n?”
came Coop’s voice. “I can’t hardly see anything.”

“You’ll see it in a minute, if you keep your
eyes starboard. Our inspector spotted a patrol. I don’t reckon
they’d waste their time on any old corner of the city. Time to get
their attention. Brace yourselves. This’ll be rough.”

The captain removed the linking bars for the
various control levers and began to push them apart. The turbines
groaned against their mountings and twisted the ship into an odd,
diagonal drift. One of the turbines started to bind, producing a
terrible whining noise. He eased the misaligned throttle just a bit
to cut the sound off, but it had done its job. The patrol was on
its way.

Unlike the patchwork and much abused
Wind
Breaker
, the patrol ship was sleek and pristine as it emerged
from the darkness. A grid of green lights was affixed to each side
of its prow, and a line of fléchette guns and grapplers similar to
those used by the wailers was mounted to the forward railing. The
only thing the
Wind Breaker
had on it was size, as the craft
was barely a third as large and manned by only three people.

“Attention!” announced one of the
crewmembers, bellowing through a megaphone. “This section of
Fugtown is restricted. If you have business here, be prepared to
present your authorization. Otherwise return to the docks.”

“Oh, I’ve got business all right,” Captain
Mack called out as best as he could through his mask. “I’m supposed
to be getting this crate repaired. Only problem is, the damn thing
started to drift on me. Got way off course. I’d be glad to take a
tow, if you’re offering.”

“If you are in distress, why didn’t you sound
your distress whistle?”

“Been busted for even longer than the
turbines.”

The crew of the patrol ship conferred.
Captain Mack didn’t show a flicker of concern. The same could not
be said for Wink. From the moment the fug folk had come into view
he had been trying to hide behind the captain. After a brief
discussion, one crewman manned a grappler, and another stepped to a
gun.

“There is a courtyard a quarter of a mile
east of here. Guide your ship there, power down, and drop anchor.
Once we confirm that you are immobile, we will leave a man with you
and send for a dedicated tow ship. In the future, report for repair
before your ship is so severely disabled.”

“I’ll do my best, but finances are none too
obliging.” He leaned low and spoke as quietly as was reasonable
into the speaking tube. “When the anchor drops, so do you. The
dragging anchor should cover your noise.”

#

Above, the captain maneuvered his ship with
apparent difficulty into the courtyard. The portion of the crew
representing the away team watched through the open personnel hatch
as the dimly lit ground slid by. Each crewmember was loaded down
with whatever equipment they felt they might need, along with as
many empty sacks as they could carry, and they’d tied additional
equipment into bundles and chained it along the length of a
rope.

Captain Mack angled the ship such that the
hatch was in shadow, giving them the maximum cover but minimum
visibility. He then lowered the ship dangerously close to the
ground and prepared the seldom-used anchor.

“We go one at a time. Standard land
evacuation methods.”

“Wait. I don’t
know
the standard land
evacuation methods,” Nita said.

“He just means jump. And try to roll when you
hit the ground,” Coop said. “Hope it doesn’t bust my stitches.”

“This sounds like the sort of thing I should
have practiced,” Nita said.

“No time like the present!” Lil said. The
frightening sound of the anchor dropping onto the cobblestone of
the courtyard rang out. “Follow my lead, and make sure you don’t
lose your mask!”

Lil braced her mask to her face with one hand
and dropped through the hatch, plummeting five or six feet. She
landed feet first, pitching forward into a shoulder roll and ending
up on her feet and running. Coop kicked the bundles of equipment
out, then followed them. He didn’t have quite the same level of
grace, but he nonetheless landed without a scratch. Next, it was
Nita’s turn. She held her mask tight and jumped.

Coop and Lil had made it look easy, but it
wasn’t until she was in the air that Nita realized if there was a
knack to it, she hadn’t worked it out. She hit the ground hard,
tipping forward into more of a tumble than a roll. When she finally
slid to a stop she was a bit bruised, a few of her tools went
clattering across the ground, and her ankle made a worrying crack,
but she was still in one piece.

Lil made her way to Nita at a low run,
helping her to her feet and gathering her lost tools. The three of
them snagged the fallen equipment bundle.

Gunner opted for a different exit, dangling
down from the edge by his hands to shorten his fall. His plan was
somewhat foiled when the anchor finally bit into the courtyard,
causing a sudden and violent end to the
Wind Breaker
’s drift
and dislodging him before he was ready. He fell to the ground and
landed hard on his back. Despite only falling a few feet, he seemed
utterly shocked.

“You okay, Gunner?” Lil whispered as she and
Nita helped him to his feet.

“Easy, easy,” he said insistently.

“Oh, calm down. It was barely a fall. I
jumped
twice
as far as you, and you don’t see me getting all
twitchy.”

“But
you
aren’t strapped with firearms
and explosives.”

“Good point.”

“Quit fooling around back there,” Coop said.
“Let’s get moving before they notice us down here.”

The group moved as swiftly and silently as
they could, heading due north. Once they were out of the dim halo
of light cast by the ships, they found themselves stumbling in inky
blackness. Only the remote glow of a second ship far in the
distance broke up the tapestry of midnight purple around them. The
heavy, dense fumes seemed to deaden sound as well, swiftly muting
the noise of the ships and leaving them with nothing but their own
footsteps and labored breaths. When she felt they were far enough
to escape notice, Nita pulled her trusty gas lamp from her belt and
sparked it to life. The group huddled around the circle of
light.

“Who’s got the compass?” she asked.

“Right here,” Coop said. He pulled it out.
“We’re headed in the right direction.”

“Are we sure? I can’t see anything. This
place is pitch black. I don’t know how he could possibly navigate
down here.”

“Trust me when I tell you, the cap’n could
make the whole trip to Caldera and back with his eyes closed. He
wouldn’t be the cap’n otherwise.”

“Well, let’s keep moving north then,” Nita
said. “Everyone keep your eyes peeled for something it looks like
they don’t want us to break into.”

#

“I thought that anchor would never dig in,”
Captain Mack called out, regaining his footing after the sudden
stop.

“Stand clear,” the patrolman ordered. “We
will send over two grapplers. Secure them and I will send a
chaperone aboard.”

The patrolman manning the grappling-hook
launcher fired off a hook, then loaded and fired another. Captain
Mack made sure they were hooked onto something sturdy, and the
patrol ship winched out the slack and hauled the gondolas close
enough to bridge the gap with a gangplank. One of the scrawny men
scurried across. He was dressed similarly to the others in a gray
vaguely military uniform, including a long jacket and a cap with a
short brim. Armed with a long rifle, he held it at the ready, as
though he were venturing into enemy territory. Mack offered him a
hand to help him down to the deck, but the patrolman sneered at it
with smug disdain.

“We shall return with a tow. There will of
course be a fee involved,” the superior officer announced from the
patrol ship as he pulled back the gangplank and his subordinate
aboard the
Wind Breaker
unhooked the grapplers.

“Can’t imagine there wouldn’t be,” Mack
called back. “You folk do seem to find a way to charge for damn
near everything.”

If the officer had heard the jab, he made no
indication. Instead he took the controls of his ship and steered it
off toward the center of Fugtown. Mack turned to the chaperone. The
fug person was eyeing the ship with the trained suspicion of
someone who expected nothing less than murderous treachery at the
root of any given interaction.

“This ship looks like it’s been recently
patched,” he said. “What are those?”

He indicated two sections of railing that
were wrapped and tied with blankets. Each bulged up beneath its
covering.

“Telescopes. We take folks on sightseeing
trips. Wasn’t sure if the fug would be good for ’em, so we trussed
’em up. You’d be surprised how sensitive those things can—”

“Why is your inspector wearing a
harness?”

“He’s been up to things he shouldn’t be up
to. Thought it was wise to keep him where I could see him. No
telling what sort of hijinks—”

“If it isn’t performing its duties, you
should have it replaced. It is clearly damaged.”

“He might be a handful sometimes, but he’s
still been part of the crew for a while. I think he can be
straightened out. You want any food while we’re waiting? My cook’s
still on board, and she’s the best in Keystone.”

“Certainly not,” he said with the same
revulsion as if he’d been offered a raw pig head to eat. “I am here
to ensure you don’t do anything foolish. I don’t want any of your
horrid swill, and I don’t want to hear about what you use this
broken-down ship to do.” He pointed the rifle at the captain. “Just
keep quiet until then, and this assignment will at least be
tolerable.”

“If that’s the way you want it to be,”
Captain Mack said. He turned to watch the patrol ship retreating,
then pulled a half-smoked cigar from his pocket and idly twirled it
through his fingers. “A word of advice though, if you ever find
yourself on my ship again.”

“What insipid advice could you possibly give
me?”

“Don’t insult my ex-wife’s cooking.”

“I will do whatever I—”

A heavy clang cut his statement short as
Butch delivered a punishing blow to the back of his head with a
meat tenderizer. The blow was enough to send him to the ground in a
dazed stupor. She growled a vicious, unintelligible statement and
spat.

“Sometimes I wonder why we ever separated,
darlin’. I’ll tie him up. You keep an eye out for that flare.” He
knelt beside their prisoner and got to work. “The fella is going to
have a very interesting bruise to remember this by.”

#

The away team had made it to the edge of the
courtyard. Overhead, the worrying drone of a second patrol ship
loomed. Around them sprawled a “neighborhood” of neglected
buildings. It was the first unsupervised look any of them had seen
of what the fug had left behind, and it troubled them in a profound
way. When a war sweeps through a place it leaves the city in ruins,
broken and unlivable. Such was not the case here. Though many of
the buildings were beginning to suffer from lack of maintenance,
some looked perfect. If she’d not known the truth, Nita could have
imagined a bustling community making its home here just days ago. A
sense that all of the people had simply vanished, leaving their
world behind, lingered.

Nita took in what she could see of their
surroundings. They were walking along the edge of what had probably
been the main road of the area. Unlike the artful architecture of
her own home, the buildings were boxy and utilitarian. Some were
multistory homes, but as they moved on, most were stout and
sprawling structures, factories perhaps, or warehouses. They’d been
built simply and efficiently from masonry, but everything had an
unnaturally dark tint. The fact that everything, from the shingles
to the iron fences, and even the withered trees, had the same tint
suggested that the fug was to blame.

The droning of turbines grew louder, and the
dim green light of a ship cast a long shadow.

“Come on, let’s get to the alley. We’re far
enough from the main city that any motion at all will give us
away,” Gunner said.

They huddled together in the long, tall space
between two warehouses and waited for the ship to pass by. The
patrol ship seemed to coast to a stop above them, its green light
painting a stark line across the ground, forcing them farther back
into the shadows. Finally the turbines revved, and the ship moved
on.

“We
gotta
be close now. That ship is
lingering right around this spot,” Coop said.

Lil squinted in the distance. “What’s that at
the other end of the alley? Across the other courtyard there.”

Gunner, pulled a rifle from his back and
raised it, peering through the scope.

“I can just barely make it out through this
pea soup. It looks like a single guard, lightly armed, standing in
front of a well-lit door,” he said.

“That’s got to be the place. Let’s go.
Everyone know their parts?” Nita asked.