12. Songbird
I made my way forward within the bowels of the hulking machinery, taking cover in the pipes and alcoves as the occasional crewman in gray coveralls passed me by. Stymied by a cluster of hands discussing the latest delay, I took an access ladder down, alighting upon a catwalk suspended in the surprisingly hollow center of the vessel.
The space was wide here and brightened by incandescent bulbs hung every twenty feet, tracking alongside a cylindrical, ten-foot diameter truss of gunmetal steel I felt to be at the exact core. Into its length every two hundred feet thick girders converged like slices of pie originating from all about the ship.
Within this long trunk which seemed to run the entirety of the vessel, I could see smaller cylinders stacked end to end within repeating niches, each perhaps a foot in length and quarter that in breadth. With only the rush of air accompanying, I skulked closer. Each one seemed to glow. Inspecting the nearest, I found upon its side a crystal window, inside of which burned an undulating spark. On a larger scale, I'd seen this glow most recently. Stenciled on the side of one I spied a code, "LLC - 8088326. Two-man carry. 200LB lift." About the tube I happened upon signs warning of "High Voltage" and every so often detected the whiff of electricity.
Lift cells.
"You! Who are you and what are you doing here!" The voice was deep and from down the catwalk, clearly directed toward me. Glancing upward, I spied two burly mates drop from a ladder to the grating below.
"I'm, uh, I'm sorry but I'm lost. You wouldn't be able to show me the way out, would you?"
"Do you think that's him?" The shorter of the pair whispered. As they drew closer, I discerned the taller with dark mustache and hair.
"Look to his hand." The stout replied with a nod of his cap.
I held up my bandaged appendages. "Look, I ain't got no quarrel with you men."
"Yeah, but if what I thinks under that bandage, fella, we sure as hell have a quarrel with you. Let's take a look."
I bolted, throwing open a hatch and riding the side rails down. I looked upward to see the men giving chase, shouting after me and raising the alarm. Alighting in the corridor Elizabeth had fled within I hastened to port, knocking a porter aside in my eagerness to escape. Suddenly I was on the outer Promenade. With people looking I calmed myself, searching in vain hope that I'd been wrong...that I'd see her in men's arms taking her off the ship.
The searchers had passed our stateroom by. Glancing behind me I could see them tearing apart a room some two hundred feet aft. I took the opportunity to gather my meager keepsakes, and when I emerged, I heard a ruckus of men and slipped into the crowd, working my way forward until I hit the bow gangway. Careful to keep my eyes straight and hands in pockets, I disembarked.
Making my way through the masses I discerned fresh smoke rising about the city against a cloud swept sky and an aerodrome besieged by panicky citizens. Whenever the Constabulary would wander by, I'd look away. Eventually I found a pair of gloves in a man's pocket and lifted them, figuring that I needed them more than he did.
Despite my supposed escape I remained beside myself, such that after fruitless minutes of search I began asking random folk if they'd seen her. "Brown haired, blue eyed...blue skirt?" I kept asking. Most looked at me as if I were mad. Eventually one woman graced me with a response. "Well, with the uprising, everyone's looking for their kin."
"Uprising?" I finally asked, realizing finally that what was burning Columbia was not me. "Who?"
"The anarchists. The Vox. They seem to have taken the destruction of the Lamb's tower as a sign from God. Or Marx. Or whomever they pray to. They've taken hostages in half of the buildings in the South." She looked to her husband. "Edward heard they're executing every white person they could find! We're trying to get to New York and family."
Vox Populi, I remembered Claire saying. Daisy Fitzroy. Beside this woman a fellow refugee raised her voice. The husband was having none of it. "Fitzroy could never launch such a brazen assault! Her folk are just a bunch of unarmed riff raff, led by a colored murderess! I tell you there's a man's mind behind this, and if you ask me it's Eisner. I even heard a militiaman say the Bolsheviks have sent airships!"
With the woman distracted by his outburst I slipped away, desperate to locate Elizabeth. Why hadn't she just let me speak? Glancing outward into the streaming clouds I thought about what had happened, wondering in my self-recrimination what a 'Bolshevik airship' might look like. As I sighed, two decks below on a smaller mating arm I saw Columbian Militia boarding a heavily gunned zeppelin, one stout trooper with a brown-haired girl unconscious in his arms. On the lift bags' side was painted a fearsome war hawk swooping on its prey. Now I recognized it...the very same one that had cannoned us on the Monument Tower. Its name was emblazoned below:
Songbird.
"Hey, Mister. You need a shine bad and I needs da money." A black shoeshine boy called out, newsboy cap tipped at a rakish cant over a brown suspendered tan shirt.
"I need a lot more than a shine." I said as I made for a stairwell, craning out a window as I generated my plan of attack. "But thanks, anyway." A steam horn sounded. Songbird was casting off. In a panic I flew down the first flight of stairs, old bones screaming at my folly. Taking the next with less bravado, I got to the base and burst through the double doors. The remaining Columbians turned to see what the commotion was. Ten feet had opened between the deck and open deck gate. Ten feet to oblivion.
Bellowing to high heaven I dashed through a gauntlet of astonished faces, found the last of the floorboards behind me as I sailed across the widening gap, hurtling at the wide-eyed trooper retracting the pierced metal gangway. We collided with a meaty thud, his body cushioning my landing as his skull cracked the decking. The kid next to him could not have been more than twenty. He thought about bringing his repeater up and I shot him in the leg. When he shrieked from the deck and tried anew, I put one between his eyes. Bullets stung the air. I dove behind the gangplank man's motionless hulk. Rolling to my feet, I squeezed off a shot and leapt away, dashing about the curve of the zepp's understructure with bullets following. About the corner I ran smack dab into another soldier, older than the first with big bushy sideburns and a cigar in his mouth. With my fist I jammed it down his throat. He staggered a step aft…spit it out upon the teak and growled. With a mallet like riposte he drove hard into my kidney. I winced and gaped...fell backward. He wasn't wasting time with fisticuffs now...he was going for his gun.
My shot pierced his shoulder and neck, and as he went down the man's repeater clattered to the deck. I lunged for it...unloaded into the next two crewmen as they leapt from the forecastle. Brap brap brap brap! Bursts of red and fabric billowed. Both stumbled forward, crashing face first into the ventilation funnel.
"It's him!" I heard from the rim of the Aerodrome, now a hundred feet away. Along its balustrade Constabulary and a handful of Militia were taking up positions alongside throngs of onlookers. Shots rang out. From out of the flight deck a lone figure appeared, the pilot, Broadsider in hand. I yanked my rifle up, the barrel hot and popping.
"Not another goddamned inch."
As the vessel continued to open range downwind the man held his hands up, gun vertical. A flash of eyes aside gave the ruse away. Only too late did I realize I'd taken station before an open hatch. Something slammed into my side, smashed the repeater to the railing. The 'something' proceeded to jam his forearm into my throat.
My eyes opened to see the burly bald who had so appallingly manhandled Elizabeth, glaring down upon me as if I was the spawn of Satan himself. Maybe I was. Unable to breath, I dropped the repeater and futilely fumbled for the .38 inside my vest. Feeling my attempt, he bashed my head back against the railing.
"Get out of the way and let me shoot him!" I heard the pilot exclaim. The brute was having none of it. Forty years of hatred fueled blow after blow until his fists left me bleeding from my mouth and face first upon the wood. Fingers gripped my hair...pulled my head up and back to smash my face into the splinters below.
When my grandfather had finished telling us stories about Good Boy and his brother Long Tooth on the 'stead, my brothers and I would often argue about who was the bravest and most cunning. Sometimes the aftermath of his stories involved some good-natured wrestling...sometimes a fight. Daniel liked to fight dirty, and I would often find myself in this very same position, being his younger by two years. Not partial to eating dirt, I developed an unorthodox but effective remedy to the situation. Funny how life is like that...pain that instructs later.
With a twist I wrenched myself upon side, feeling my hair about to tear out in his grip. With the man's legs open, I thrust my hand into his crotch and popped his balls. His eyes bugged out and he fell face first onto me. Before he could throw up, I rolled away, kicked him hard in the head with my boot. As he reeled from the blow, I turned to see the black-haired, terrified pilot, pistol cupped in both hands. He fired again but I rolled away, splinters flying from the deck where the round hit. I came up with the repeater and unloaded into his chest.
For a moment he stood there, eyes wobbling, gazing down as he slumped to the deck. The bald man was puking, pawing for something in his jacket...a gun perhaps. With a single shot to the temple I relieved him of his misery.
I could see now that the Songbird was angling downward at a precipitous cant. Pulling myself up by the railing, I headed for the cabin he'd spirited Elizabeth to. The door opened with a creak. She lay half-conscious upon a bench within. Her eyes cracked at my approach but seemed incapable of focus. Feeling the deck angle pitching, I threw myself forward into the control cab.
I'd ridden horses my whole life, even driven a steam locomotive, but never had I been presented with such a panoply of controls as operated an airship. About me were levers of all manner, gauges and compass and at its center a brass of the vessel's cross section. Set against a black sphere, the symbol for the airship was precipitously below the silver line. I realized that in killing the pilot, I'd made a profound mistake.
The gunfire outside had petered off, but Emporia's towers were approaching. Already we were below the highest of them. Firemen watched from their water spouting zeppelins as Songbird cut through their number.
The most obvious control before me was a polished mahogany wheel, much like that of a steamship with eight horns about its circumference. Thinking that at least I could control the location of our crash, I spun it right and found that not only it turned but pulled back. Drawing away in fear of the fiery pillars ahead, I felt Songbird pitch and saw our nose rise. Realizing that I might just learn to fly the beast, I brought the wheel back center and level.
"Elizabeth, I've got us an airship!" I cried, dashing back to her body supine on the couch.
"Stay away from me..." She mumbled. I hefted her in my arms.
"Can you walk?" I asked, loping back toward the control cabin. At my voice a sliver of blue appeared. Back in the cupola I set the girl in a chair to the rear of the cabin. Searching my vest, I pulled her photograph and searched the rest of Laslowe's paraphernalia, settling upon the coordinates for New York.
With a sigh I closed my eyes. "What are the coordinates for Paris?" I asked aloud. I don't know why I thought she'd know something like that, but I figured if anyone did it would be the girl who'd made the place her life's project. She didn't answer. Figuring East was good enough, I spun the wheel until the nose began to heel, settling out with the big fat "E" under the steering compass' lubber line. On course, we headed for cloud and began to leave the city behind.
Shortly we ploughed into wispy vapor. Unable to see, the confidence I'd had in my newfound airmanship evaporated. I had no idea where we were, but from in front of us I thought I heard noise. Cocking my ear, I knew I wasn't imagining things. The sound was that of gunshots...and a foghorn. Ahead and above shapes began to resolve, along with a brilliant blue beacon that turned and flashed in my face.
With no time to react, I pulled hard upon the wheel. Though the nose pulled up slowly, Songbird's midsection did not. Where shadows had loomed now high gray walls and concrete edifices threatened. Below us in the street Columbian troops scattered, hurling their bodies off barricades, through windows, and into fighting positions. All about us small fires burned, sending smoke into the wind. I threw myself over Elizabeth.
Unlike true Zeppelins, Songbird was more ship than air. Constructed with a frame steel hull and heavy guns, she was obviously lofted by lift cells rather than hot air and built to fight. Fingernails across chalkboard, her prow dug into the oncoming avenue, stone and brickwork flying left and right like a ship ploughing the sea. As Songbird died, she rolled. Elizabeth and I were flung forward and onto the cabin's side, hitting the wheel mount before the sound diminished. Hand upon head I looked upward, found Elizabeth crumpled into my bloody, battered form. Outside I heard commotion and shouts of, "By the Prophet!"
About us screams and gunfire erupted. Throwing myself backward against the window frame's metal lowers I saw gunmen issuing from the blocky buildings above, rifles blazing. Outside Constabulary and troopers were falling like flies. Deciding to let whoever was picking off Comstock's folk continue, I caught Elizabeth in my arms and headed aft, cautiously negotiating the caddy corner walls and door of the cupola. Aside from a fire growing about the vessel's rent airscrews, the ship seemed remarkably intact. For her crew I couldn't say the same.
Wherever we'd come to rest the streets were not nearly as charming as what I'd previously seen in Columbia. Instead of brickwork and whitewashed dormers I'd marveled at in Emporia, the buildings here were stolid and built of heavy sandstone. Keeping to the lee of Songbird's damaged tailfin, I stumbled with Elizabeth over my shoulder until I found a building with an unlocked door. Sheltering inside from the debris strewn thoroughfare, I closed the heavy wood against both draft and bullets. Continuing onward, we emerged in an empty alleyway to the sound of distant gunfire. Following its zagging turns, all too soon I found us confronted by a checkpoint, chock to the brim with nervous Columbian militia.
Hours passed, the smoke marred clouds eventually turning pink with the onset of dusk. In the distance I spied the black silhouette of an approaching Columbian gunship...Songbird's sister. Discovering an abandoned pantry and kitchen, I filled a pitcher with water from a faucet and headed back to the alcove. Placing a glass to Elizabeth's mouth, she did not drink. With the gunfire approaching, I dashed it into her face.
She startled, wiped herself with the back of her hand. "Mr...DeWitt? She said after woozy moments. Her eyes widened and she jumped backward. "Get...get away from me!" I lunged at her and threw my hand upon her mouth...which she abruptly bit.
With a grimace and wince of eyes I shook her off, glaring at my twice insulted hand. Impulsively she lurched upright onto her boot toes, forcing herself back against the door. "Elizabeth!" I growled, catching her by the arm before she stumbled upon the brick strewn floor. "God dammit, cut it out! You're gonna get us killed!" Struggling in my arms, she suddenly heard the report of nearby gunfire and froze.
"Where...where are we?" She asked, fear in her voice, desire for flight chastened by the threat. "What...how'd we get here?"
"A rifle butt." I said, drawing her eyelid back to look at her pupil. "To your head. How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Three...no four?" She said, hand upon temple. I was holding three. "I can't focus and the light...hurts my eyes."
"Give it a few moments...you just came to." I whispered, peering out into the twilight trough half closed blinds. "Night's almost upon us...that should help." Outside I heard boots racing, the clatter of armed men rushing by and anxious voices. I pulled her deeper into shadow.
"You didn't say where..."
"I didn't say because I'm not sure."
"How'd...the last thing I remember was..."
"I don't know, Elizabeth. Wherever the hell you popped yourself off to it looked like an airship, but they were speaking French...at least one of them."
"I...I saw a tear to the Versailles." She whispered morosely. "I thought..."
"That they'd help you?" I brushed her hair...looked again upon that nasty lump. "Every ship is being held at the Aerodrome until they find you. Their crews ain't your friends and no one is going to let you go anywhere." As she began to understand her ire turned to despair. "So...how's New York sounding now?"