24. Siphon

"What's your name, son?"

"Garvey, Sir." The aeronaut said, voice a tremble at the sight of my automatic against his head. "Hansen Garvey."

"Very well, Captain Garvey. I trust you understand the situation? Your Prophet is dead and his daughter is with us. If she tells you what she wants, will you honor her wishes?" A rack of my repeater ensured only one response was likely.

Garvey's eyes turned to the dead men in the Wheelhouse, their blood oozing upon the floor. "I...shall."

I glanced to Elizabeth. "Seed of the Prophet, what is your desire?"

Again her eyes had fallen upon her dead father. Elizabeth turned with resignation to meet mine. "Destroy the Siphon." She whispered. From behind Cade Slate's brow furrowed. A stir rose amongst their men.

"Siphon? What dis Siphon?" Cade questioned.

Her voice came out louder, more bitterly now. "It's the tower where I was imprisoned." With her hand she pointed toward the decapitated rise of the angel of Columbia and spoke more firmly. "Destroy it."

At gunpoint Garvey took the Hand's helm, communicating to a still cowed Slate that he needed a crew to fly the airship...a crew that Slate's assault had deprived him of. An argument ensued, with Slate shouting that he'd only killed whom he'd had to and that most of Garvey's men yet hadn't even seen their guns. As their ire grew, I couldn't help but be drawn back to her. She'd put on quite a show and shocked everyone, but Elizabeth was inconsolable when I came to her side. These were not tears of sorrow but those of lost hope.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth. I'm...I'm so sorry." My words came out hollow, yet nothing I could find within could convey how much rage I'd felt at that man for doing what he'd done to her, nor why. I only knew that he'd done her unspeakable wrong and, that despite my better instincts, I loved her.

"You killed him." She said quietly. Not accusingly, but amid her tears more an acknowledgement of fact.

"I kept my word."

Garvey threw a series of levers and bells rang out. Through a series of air tubes, I heard a man answer his commands and the Hand began to heel, air buffeting the cab as cloud and smoke began to flow by. After a moment the remains of Monument Island loomed dead center in the glass.

"But...but now I've lost my father. I have no mother...no family...I have...nothing."

Tentatively I took her by the hands...looked into her eyes. "No, Elizabeth. You have me and I will never let you go."

As the ship coursed through the air a sun shaft gleamed into the cabin, and for a moment I saw our reflection in the glass. Her eyes had closed, her hands within mine. I was aware others were looking upon us still but I didn't care. Yet seeing her thimble I had to wonder. What had Comstock meant? How could I know a damned thing about that?

My reflection became stronger now as the sun was masked by the outer window frames, and as I studied the woman beside me something about that reflection caught my curiosity, how the furrow between my eyebrows turned...my nose. My blue eyes. Inexorably my gaze turned to the corpse Slate's men had removed from the wheel.

Elizabeth opened her eyes. "What...what it?"

I knelt...turned Comstock's head to my inspection. When I'd seen the man before, our encounter had been uncanny. Now I knew why.

"Booker, what is it?" She asked worriedly, and I felt her hand upon my arm.

"It can't be." I said, unable to believe what I was seeing.

"Please, Booker, you're frightening me!"

"Comstock...he's..." I managed, and with a double take in her perplexed eyes dawned the same realization. "Me."

As she looked the epiphany struck her too. Her hand shot to her mouth. "Oh, my God."

"He's me."

"By God in Heaven..." Cornelius muttered. "Older and skinnier...but I see it now. How could I not...how is that even possible!?"

Face graven, I looked back to Elizabeth. "I don't know." She was looking upon me now, distressed as I was. "But somehow, it's got to be her."

As the reality sunk in, I heard a shout from Slate's port lookouts. Amid the shock it was hard to turn my attention, but a billowing black burst just off our bow helped. In unison with its crack Slate, his men and Garvey turned to see an airship descending from the clouds above, red star coming into view as it matched our angle for another volley. Men were scurrying upon its decks, taking to small and large weapons alike...readying for a fight.

Engels.

"God in heaven!" I exclaimed, turning to Garvey. "You've got to make this thing go faster!"

"Faster is not the answer!" Garvey shouted back, hands already racing the controls. "We've got to find cover!"

"There's got to be some sort of throttle or accelerator around!" Elizabeth shouted. Slate and his men had raced outside, futilely opening fire at the approaching warship.

"I have us at flank speed, Madame!" Garvey shouted. Ahead Monument Isle was falling to port and Engels closing fast, four heavy guns slung beneath coming ominously to bear. "What more can I do!?"

Between Engels' guns I saw a uniformed German gunnery captain drop his hand, and suddenly the weapons, eight barrels in all, flashed. My eyes went wide and I took Elizabeth to the deck. Around us the wheelhouse exploded, shearing the top of the cabin away and puncturing it with a spray of shrapnel. With ringing ears I looked up to see the wheel barely intact and Garvey gone. Outside Slate, Cade and his irregulars continued to give Engels' hell, but behind them I saw the Hand exploding in a series of titanic detonations. I spun to the controls. "We have to fly this thing!" I cried out, throwing the wheel to make for a tower of cloud billowing before us. Eyes racing the console, I struggled to find a throttle. "Where is the goddamned throttle!" I yelled. "Do you know what that looks like?!"

Beside me Elizabeth wrung her hands. "I don't know!"

My control input was too large and too fast. As it took effect, the Hand began to list into the turn. Outside I could see gunners and crew fall in sheaves into the cloudy void below, dislodged by Engels' heavy guns and thrown clear by my drunken steersmanship. Engels' guns came to bear, and I realized that another shot from the range they'd closed to would be it. We were already on fire...now we would die.

"Elizabeth, the throttle!"

"It's too late for that!" She cried, leaping outward onto the prow of the doomed warship. As Engels drew ever closer for the kill, I realized that we were getting perilously close to Monument Island. A shear of light eclipsed my view, a great curtain pulling back in a half mile circular veil of fire. As the air crackled and snapped two grey behemoths plowed through the tear, the American warships I'd seen off the coast of Maine...Wyoming and Arkansas, belching black plumes of smoke behind them as their airscrews tore the air with deafening thunder. On Engels I heard claxons, saw its guns turning at the behest of petrified gunners. On the Americans I could see shock too, faces arrived early to a fight they'd neither been ready for nor expected at all. As their crews rushed to battle stations, Engels made the fatal mistake of starting a war.

She got one shot in then another upon Arkansas, which suddenly billowed smoke and fire. In unison Arkansas and Wyoming's twelve inchers unleased in spectacular broadside. Engels' aim had been devastating to the Hand.

Wyoming's and Arkansas' response was lethal.

Explosions erupted down the Bolshevik's 800-foot length, lift bags incinerating the shards and flesh of gunners as they flew outward into the void. Deprived of buoyancy its burning hulk began to fall, picking up speed until it slammed into the buildings at the base of Monument Island. Its magazine detonated instantly, blowing the airship and facilities to hell.

Around us energy crackled and exploded with surreal intensity along the mortally wounded frame of the Hand of the Prophet, now in a fiery plunge to the sea. Everything around me was charged with light. Unable to control the vessel, I clung to the railings and looked outward from the wrecked Bridge. "Elizabeth! I can't control it!" Before us the clouds broke and I could see not only the falling remains of Monument Island but whitecaps. "Elizabeth! Do something...we're gonna die!"

Amid the gale I noticed that she too was glowing, holding on to nothing, looking oddly at her hands as the Atlantic approached. "No, we're not." She said in an impossibly calm voice.

She threw wide her arms and the world exploded.