The Flux Engine (9 page)

“All right,” he said, trying not to think too hard about the decision he just made. “I’ll help you if you get me out of jail.”

Hickok stuck out his hand and John shook it.

“Done,” Hickok said. “Now raise your right hand and say what I say.”

John raised his hand.

“I, John Porter,” Hickok began.

“What are you up to, Hickok?” the Sheriff asked, suspicion thick in his voice.

John repeated the words, then continued parroting the Enforcer.

“… Solemnly promise to uphold and defend the Articles of the Colonial Alliance and to enforce with justice her laws and the laws of her territories. May the Builder aid me.”

“Okay,” Hickok said once John finished. “If you’ve got anything here, you’d better get it, we’re leaving.”

“I don’t think so,” Batts said. He stood with his arms folded across his chest and a half smile on his lips that clearly said he had no intention of letting John go.

“You don’t understand,” Hickok said in an easy manner that reminded John uncomfortably of Morgan. “I’ve just made young John here my deputy.”

“What?”

John was surprised to find that the exclamation came from himself.

“That doesn’t change anything,” Batts said. “I can arrest deputy enforcers.”

“That’s true,” Hickok admitted, stroking his mustache sagely. “But I think you’ll find that you need authorization from the governor to do that. Now, if you send a message to Saint Louis by etherium telegraph, you should have your answer back in a few days. Until then, however, you have no authority to arrest my deputy.”

John thought Batts was going to draw on the enforcer. The sheriff’s hand kept twitching toward the hilt of his pistol and a pulsing vein stood out on his forehead. It was clear he was thinking fast, trying to find some way to hang on to John, to make John his prize and not Hickok’s.

“Fine,” he said at last. “But I want you and this walking disaster area out of my town by sunset.”

“Fine,” Hickok said. “Let’s go, Johnny.”

Numbly, John followed the enforcer out the hole in the wall and onto the sunlit streets of Sprocketville. He’d never been thrown out of a town before, and now he had to leave his own home. Probably forever.

Bill Hickok paused a moment, looking down into John’s face, then he clapped him on the shoulder.

“Been a hell of a day, hasn’t it, son?”

John had to admit, it had.

Chapter 9

Family Ties

The second Robi cleared the broken hole that was Fixer’s back wall she turned to the right.

Run.

At the alley’s end, a dirty machine shop leaned as if its peeling boards were tired. A filth-encrusted window faced the alley under a flat roof ten feet up. Robi could hear shouting and commotion coming from the street. It wouldn’t take curious onlookers long to find their way to the scene of the blast. At least she was still ahead of Batts and his—

“There you are.”

A man-mountain in a red waistcoat burst around the corner, throwing his arms wide. Robi didn’t know which of Batt’s deputies this was, but it didn’t matter. He lunged forward, trying to wrap her up in his enormous reach, but coming at her straight on was a mistake. Robi dove forward, tucking her head down, and rolled between the deputy’s legs. As she came up, her hand closed around the loose dust of the alley; before she was fully on her feet she turned, flinging the grit into the deputy’s face as he whirled around.

“You bitch,” he swore, charging at the spot where she’d stood.

A moment later he slammed into the window of the machine shop, scattering the glass in a rain of green shards. Robi kicked the stunned man behind his knee, knocking him down on all fours, then, before he could clear his vision, she leaped up on his back and vaulted up, catching the roof above with both hands.

Grunting with the effort, she pulled herself up and rolled away from the edge, lying perfectly flat.

In the alley below the deputy was swearing as he got the dirt out of his eyes. Robi pressed herself flat against the roof and tried to quiet her breathing but she needn’t have bothered.

“What happened?” Batts’ voice floated up from below.

“The girl got past me,” the deputy said.

“Stay here,” Batts said, disgust in his voice. “Try not to let any more children escape. And clean up, your face is bleeding.”

The sheriff’s footsteps receded down the alley, leaving the grumbling deputy behind. He might look for her but he would never think to look right under his own nose. Or above it, as the case might be.

If someone’s chasing you, find a place to hide and let them go by.
The old man …

The old …

Robi’s limbs began to shake and her eyes filled with tears. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood but she couldn’t stop. Her body contorted as sobs wracked her and she stuffed her fist into her mouth to muffle the sound. She lay there, trying not to move until the worst of it passed.

Her face burned with shame. The last time she cried was when the old man died. It had been over a year, but the memory of it still twisted in her guts like a knife.

O O O

It had been a simple job.

Break into a heavily-guarded, high-security Alliance lab, steal a sealed canister from a vault, and get out clean.

Easy.

It had gone smoothly. Then it all fell apart.

The old man went to meet with the client. Robi had seen him once, big, with broad shoulders and olive skin—Hawaiian maybe, or a South-Sea Islander. The old man called him Kest. Clearly they knew each other, but Kest wasn’t one of their regular business associates.

Maybe that was why he went alone. Took the canister and ordered Robi to stay behind.

But Robi didn’t stay.

As soon as the old man was gone, she sneaked out and ran to the meeting place. From the roof of a building across the street, she watched the exchange through a pair of binoculars. Kest was there, all square jaw and iron gray hair. He brought several men with him, dressed in hooded green robes. Once Kest had his canister, his men attacked. What they didn’t know, couldn’t have known, was that Hiro Laryn learned his skills from his father Yuguri Takahashi. Yuguri hadn’t been a thief. Yuguri had been an assassin.

Hiro had done a lot to sever ties with his father, including taking a Western surname. What Hiro had not done, however, was forgotten Yuguri’s training.

Hiro took down the men in the green robes quickly, then turned to the window to make his escape. Before he could flee, however, another hooded man appeared. He moved so fast it was as if he’d sprung right out of the ground. Without challenge or warning, he raised a pistol and shot Hiro in the back.

Robi watched in horror as blood spread across her father’s shirt. Mortally wounded, the old man reached out and jerked off the man’s hood, clutching it as he crumpled to the floor.

O O O

The man beneath it had had sunken eyes and a large nose in the middle of an egg-shaped, bald head. That face was seared into her memory and it haunted her nightmares.

Now the face had a name to go with it.

Derek Morgan.

Every night when she missed the old man’s voice bidding her good night, she thought of what she would do if she saw him or the gray-haired man again. She’d make them suffer for what they took from her. She’d make them pay.

No matter what.

“I’m sorry, old man,” she choked.

He’d been right there, standing in Fixer’s shop as easy as you please—and she froze. He’d almost killed her. Worse, it had been easy for him. Her life was in his hands so quickly she hadn’t had time to think.

The stabbing pain came again and Robi gave herself to it, sobbing as quietly as she could. She’d always thought her father prepared her for everything, but in that moment she knew it wasn’t true. The only way she could kill Morgan was if she saw him coming from far enough away to use a flux rifle on him. Even the enforcer had had trouble with him.

Robi suddenly sat bolt upright on the roof as the full magnitude of the thought struck her.

The enforcer.

Morgan hadn’t come to Fixer’s shop looking for her, he didn’t know her from Eve. He was looking for John. On top of that, John knew or guessed something about Morgan, something Morgan didn’t want known. That was why he tried to kill John.

Robi looked around, suddenly realizing where she was, and pressed herself flat on the roof again. Below her, on the street, the enforcer and the sheriff were arguing, presumably over John’s fate. It didn’t really matter who won, the important thing was that Derek Morgan couldn’t afford to let John live. That meant he’d be back to finish the job. All Robi had to do was wait and watch—and steal a flux rifle. If she kept close to John, sooner or later, Morgan would be back.

“I’m sorry, dad,” she whispered again. She wiped the tears from her eyes. “I let you down this time but I swear that I’ll get that bastard when he comes for John. I won’t fail you—not again.”

The voices on the street raised and Robi ventured a quick look over the edge of the roof. The enforcer had his hand on John’s shoulder and Batts seemed angry. Clearly the enforcer had prevailed in the custody battle.

“I want you and this walking disaster area out of my town by sunset,” Batts yelled as John and the enforcer turned to leave.

That could be a problem.

Robi’s travel bag and all her gear were back at the hotel room she’d rented when she first arrived in Sprocketville. It would take her at least an hour to get back there, sneak into her room, and get her things. If the enforcer took John to the train station, she might have a chance of catching them, but what if they left town some other way? She was sure Morgan would track them somehow, but what was she to do?

The sun already hung low in the sky. Whatever the enforcer intended to do, he had to do it soon. Hickok seemed to be leading John in toward the center of town, where Robi’s hotel was located. If she ran straight there, she would beat Hickok and John.

It was risky, but she couldn’t leave without her gear.

Taking a deep breath, Robi made her decision. Darting up from a crouch, she ran across the roof and leapt the gap between it and the next building. Without stopping she continued from roof to roof until she ran into a warehouse, its roof at least ten feet above the one she was on.

Without slowing or stopping, she jumped down, hitting the opposite wall and then pushing immediately off. She crossed the gap again, hitting the wall of the building she started from and pushing off again. One more jump brought her down, light as a cat, into the alley between the buildings. An old miner with a dirty beard and a half finished bottle of whiskey stared at her as if she were some apparition coughed up from the pits of Hell but she paid him no mind. Throwing caution to the wind, she gathered up the skirts of her stolen dress and ran as hard as she could.

O O O

The oriental hotel was a two story wooden building painted a deep sapphire blue. It had been one of the best hotels in town in its day, but those days were firmly behind it. Now the floors creaked, the washbasins leaked, and the carpets were worn and threadbare. Robi had picked it as a joke, considering her heritage. The man who owned the place was named Roscoe, a wall-eyed, shriveled little man who hadn’t raised an eyebrow when Robi signed the register “‘Wendy Smith’.”

“Evening, Miss Smith,” he said as Robi charged in through the front door. “I take it you’ll be checking out!” he yelled after her as she continued straight up the steps to the second floor.

“Got a train to catch,” she shouted back, hoping Roscoe wasn’t too familiar with the local schedule.

Since she never really unpacked, Robi didn’t have much to do when she reached her room. Scooping the few possessions she’d left out into her small bag, she slung it over her shoulder, then grabbed the small suitcase made of carpet. It wasn’t much, but it had once belonged to her father, and it was all she had.

Pausing long enough to take a deep breath, Robi turned and ran. John and Hickok would be somewhere nearby. All she had to do was find them and follow them out of town without getting caught.

How hard could that be?

The enforcer was the key to finding them.

Wild Bill Hickok had made quite a name for himself. According to what Robi read in the newspapers he was tough, tenacious, and deadly fast with a gun. People want to catch a glimpse of a man like that. They want to remember him.

Somebody knew where he was staying in town. He’d have to go there to gather his belongings. If she were lucky, she’d get there before he and John had a chance to leave.

Shouldering her tool bag, Robi did her best not to simply run down the street. Her eyes swept the crowd of people going about their business, darting back and forth seeking familiar faces. There were none to be found. She asked a few random passersby if they knew where the famous lawman might be staying, but none did.

The minutes darted by with alarming swiftness.

Think.

Someone knows where Hickok lodged, but who? The newspapers always reported on him, why weren’t these people more …

The newspapers.

One of the first things Robi did when arriving at a new town was to check the local newspaper office and familiarize herself with the proprietor and anyone that might work for him. It wouldn’t do to accidentally say the wrong thing to a newspaper man, to say nothing of lifting his wallet.

Robi ran.

The newspaper office was one block up and three over. The hotels in this part of town were nicer than most, each with a skydock running around their upper levels so private airships could dock. As she ran, Robi passed under the bodies of several of the wooden craft, rocking in the wind like ships on the tide. Focused as she was, however, Robi took only passing notice, arriving at the office of the Sprocketville Observer in what had to be record time.

She paused for a moment to slow her breathing, then opened the door. A lean man in a pinstriped vest looked up from a typewriter, peering nearsightedly at Robi through thick spectacles. The desk and the typewriter were neat and clean and the man’s clothes were unstained with ink.

Fastidious. Good attention to detail. Perfect.

Robi smiled.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mister …”

“Tompkins,” the man said.

“Right, Mister Tompkins,” Robi said, letting her voice slip into a flirty, helpless southern drawl. “I heard that Wild Bill Hickok was in town and I’d desperately love to get his autograph for my book. Would you happen to know where Mister Hickok might be lodgin’?”

“Well, young lady, I understand Mister Hickok is staying at the Evening Star Hotel,” the man said in a high-pitched voice.

“And where might I find the Evening Star?”

“Why, it’s right across the street,” Tompkins said, pointing through his clean window.

Robi turned. The Evening Star Hotel was a sturdy, three-story building surrounded by a wooden porch. Built of whitewashed adobe bricks of the entire hotel shone in the afternoon sun. A wooden skydock extended from the uppermost story, running from one side, around the back, to the other.

A single airship hung in the air, bigger than the usual rich man’s launch with a cabin and galley below and a thick smoke stack rising up through the deck. This airship was fifty feet long if it was an inch. Its nose pointed down, like the beak of a bird of prey. About halfway along its deck, a second level rose up and continued all the way aft, broken only by an enormous round window. Two sets of propellers, mounted on long outriggers, were raised up like masts so the ship could dock. As Robi watched, a cloud of dark smoke belched out of its single stack.

“I’m afraid you might be too late,” Tompkins said as the airship began to move, drifting lazily away from the skydock. “That’s his airship there.”

Robi let out a very unladylike swear and darted out the door. The airship hadn’t yet cleared the rooftops, if she hurried, she might be able to—

“Well hello again, girly.”

Rough hands seized Robi mid-stride and she was jerked off her feet to face the deputy with the still-bleeding face.

“Not so tricky now that I got you,” he said. “You made me look all the fool before, but this time I got you good.”