"Do you think he's still there?" Yang asked Jaune as the Black Mariah rattled its way through the streets.
"He has to be. He can't make his escape from England in daylight, and I doubt he's going to be running around out in the open when it could end up with him getting pinched at any time. No, he's laying low, making preparations, and getting ready to jump aboard that airship and fly off once it's late enough for things to have died down."
He said it firmly, decisively, very much unlike the usual hesitation and self-doubt that he displayed. Even his posture told the story: he was leaning forward, hands folded, head not downcast as if praying but level, gaze fixed straight ahead at Yang. He looked every part the determined, aggressive hunter of men.
It was kind of weird seeing him like this, honestly.
His confidence was infectious. The four constables with them had the same eager look. The two older men were like Jaune, determined and ready, while the younger ones had that combination of eagerness and excitement that soldiers showed on the eve of their first battle, one they expected to win.
Yang herself was the only one, she thought, who wasn't so sanguine about their chances, and it was easy for her to tell why. Roman Torchwick had already slipped through her fingers once, played the phantom and fooled her. Jaune hadn't been fooled yet. He'd been beaten, but that was different, a matter of bringing enough force to the battle. It was a lot easier to overcome strength than it was to overcome brains.
Come to think of it, in additional to the additional constables, Yang was Jaune's "enough force."
The jostling eased as the carriage slowed up, coming to a stop. The group descended from the Mariah onto the street, while a second police wagon pulled up alongside, disgorging four more uniformed constables and a plain-clothed sergeant. The western sky glowed golden with twilight between buildings, reminding Yang that even if Jaune was right, they likely had only a few more hours before it was too late. The light was being swallowed up by a fringe of heavy, dark cloud, as if the promising rain was chasing the sun across the sky. The air was thick and heavy, matching the anticipation of the hunters.
"All right, everyone," Jaune said. "Our target is two blocks south of here. We'll make our move as soon as night falls, in case they're keeping a lookout."
"Your uniforms do tend to stand out in broad daylight," Yang agreed, "and guys like Torchwick always have an angle, a backup plan in case something goes wrong. He wore that glider rig the night he robbed Sir Reginald Galton-Chadbourne, for example, so he could get away even though he couldn't get on the airship."
"Some kind of tunnel, you mean?" the sergeant suggested. He was a burly man with a thick handlebar moustache. "Leading down into the sewers, maybe?"
"Could be," Jaune agreed. "Anyway. the point is, we don't want to give ourselves away before we get the chance to make a move. Now, Port, you and your squad will cover the loading dock, while mine with Yang will take the street door. Keep your eyes open and don't let anyone escape. We want to surround them, contain them, and move in and trap everyone there.
"To our best knowledge, Torchwick won't be alone. The airship, no matter how small it is, would still need a crew. At the very least, he'd have to have a pilot. There's likely other people there to help with the work, to run the machines that make the hydrogen gas and fill the dirigible, for example. Two servants left his house with him, as well. So we could be facing a fair-sized gang of men when we get there.
"Finally, Torchwick carries and has used firearms, or in this case a trick cane that fires a Dust explosive. His men may be armed as well; at Seven Oaks the Malachite twins had bladed weapons. For this reason, we've been authorized to open the armory and issue firearms to you men. This isn't ordinary, and I want each of you to think carefully before you decide to fire, but also remember that you're protecting yourself against armed criminals. What I'm saying is, be careful, but also don't hesitate if it becomes necessary to shoot. We're all trusting each other to use good judgment and watch each other's backs."
Yang glanced around the circle of men. This was the part that worried her the most. The sergeant handled his shotgun with the careful ease that marked him down as having experience, but several of the constables weren't anywhere near as sanguine about it. Gunfights with armed gangs just weren't a part of the normal police experience; it was possible that some of these men had never even held a pistol. Mondegreen, for example, looked like he was about to match his name.
For that matter, while she knew Jaune had practiced thoroughly with the weapon, starting with his father's tutelage from a young age, she wasn't at all sure that he'd ever fired a shot in anger. He was saying the right things, but if it came down to putting a piece of lead in an enemy, could he actually do it? She couldn't be sure, and she hoped it didn't come down to having to find out the hard way.
The waiting just made everything worse, she thought. As the golden sunset faded to dull rust-red, then through to indigo, and finally shading into black, the tension mounted for all of them. The sergeant tried to lighten the mood, proving Yang correct about his being ex-military by telling a story, beginning with "This reminds me of that one time in Bengal, when…" By the time the cook was chasing the sergeant's buddy across the camp with a frying pan, there were plenty of chuckles, but they were nervous ones, tainted with too much underlying awareness.
Gaslights came on, intermittent pinpricks in the dark atop their metal poles. Rotherhithe was not a well-lit district, and the lamps gave little illumination.
Which was a good thing for their purposes.
"All right, then," Jaune said. "Sergeant Port, your group should go first, to get in position to contain any escape attempt. We'll follow in five minutes."
"Yes, sir." Port said with a crisp nod. He turned and beckoned to his men, and they moved out into the night. Time seemed to crawl by, Jaune opening his watch to mark it off.
Waiting was not Yang's strong suit. She fidgeted, flexing her hands, twisting the ends of her hair around her fingertips, shifting her weight back and forth between her feet.
"I'm guessing you're not fond of stakeouts, miss?" Constable Burns joked at her. She flashed him a grin.
"I'd almost rather get shot at," she admitted. "It's the worst part of the job."
"It's only natural that human attention would slip after too long waiting and doing nothing," Mondegreen put in. "What's really needed is a mechanical means of keeping watch. They could build some sort of automaton which could observe an area, using its Analytical Engine to compare what it saw to a photograph or sketch of the person it was on watch for. If its clockworks were powered by verdant Dust, it could keep watch for days without need for rest or food or even just letting its attention wander!"
"Like yours is doing now?" Heyman drawled, and the excitable young man flushed with embarrassment. Yang couldn't help but be reminded of Ruby, when she got carried away by the intricacies of weapon design.
Jaune's watch snapping shut cut sharply through the banter.
"It's time," he said. "Let's go."
~X X X~
The warehouse was a hotbed of activity. From gears turning, chemical baths bubbling, to the accordion-fold bellows of extraction mechanisms pumping, noise and motion filled the air, as they had for the past several hours. Millet Jergens, formerly the groom in the Torchwick household, tugged in frustration at his rusty-red hair. Except for tasks no more complicated than throwing a switch, hauling a rope, or lifting something heavy, he had no skill with machines. Horses were his purview, something that year by year became less important. By the time he died, he figured steam-driven engines would have completely replaced the horse in travel, agriculture, and industry. The airship filling much of the building was a perfect example.
Maybe that was why he'd been so willing to turn to crime. Now, there was a career where there was plenty of job security. There was always a place for a thieving brute in any society.
Okay, maybe that place was in a cell or at the end of a rope, but it was still a place.
The problem was, the world of crime seemed to be the same as more lawful employment: technical skills were valued, and there was no need for a horse. That was why, rather than being inside the gondola running checks on the controls like Mallard the pilot, or overseeing the filling of the envelope with hydrogen gas, or working on one of a dozen other tasks that could have put his feet on solid ground, he was up on a catwalk, thirty feet above the floor, looking out a narrow slot in the wall that was more ventilator than window.
Maybe I should head to America once we've gotten out of England. I hear there are plenty of opportunities available in cattle rustling.
The self-pitying train of his thoughts was cut off by a flicker of motion outside. Staring into the dark from the well-lit warehouse wasn't easy, but there was something, just at the edge of one of the pools of gaslight.
There!
He saw it again, straining his eyes in the darkness, and he realized what was going on. Not wanting to shout, for fear that his voice would carry outside and give the game away, Jergens picked his way along the catwalk. The thin metal grille rattled under his feet, and he gripped the rails so tightly that the edges would have cut into his palms had he not been wearing gloves, but for all that he moved quickly, and positively scurried down the ladder once he reached it.
"Mr. Torchwick!" he called, rushing across the warehouse floor.
"Jergens?" Torchwick snapped. "Good Lord, now what?"
He rushed up to his boss.
"Police, outside. I saw at least three."
Torchwick snarled.
And things just keep getting better, don't they?" He put two fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply, once. Everyone, from Schwartz to the Bull, immediately stopped what they were doing and looked up. "Hey!" Torchwick barked. "We've got company!"
Immediately, people abandoned their tasks, scurrying out from behind machinery or away from their work stations. Mallard emerged from the gondola and looked down. Torchwick himself strolled to the center of the warehouse floor.
Jergens reached into his coat, feeling the slightly rough feeling of the leather-wrapped hilt of his hunting knife.
There was a loud banging from the door.
"Roman Torchwick! This is the Metropolitan Police. We have a warrant for your arrest. If you do not open this door and surrender yourself at once we have the authority to enter by force and take you into custody!"
"Okay, if that's the way it has to be, then that's the way it has to be. Get ready to move out, boys."
He lifted his cane, pointed it at the door, and fired.
~X X X~
Yang understood that they were doing this in the legal way. She'd tried bloody-minded revenge, she had failed, and that was the end of that. Now they would pursue Torchwick by the book. She understood that if the police were going to batter down an iron-bound oak warehouse door, they needed to make the proper challenges. Still, the idea that a criminal like Torchwick would actually surrender cleanly into custody was laughable. Nothing good would come from knocking at the door.
Jaune knew this as well as she did, which was why when he didn't get an immediate answer, he beckoned to Burns and Ivory, who hefted a battering ram and charged.
There were a number of things that could have been expected in the "nothing good would come" area. The criminals having time to get ready instead of being caught by surprise, or as they'd actually discussed, Torchwick bolting for an escape tunnel.
For the door to actually explode, well, that fell into an entirely different category.
There was no way for her to know the specifics, that a crimson Dust crystal had been attached to the inside of the door and set off by the smaller explosion from Torchwick's cane. The effects, though, those were plain to see: the door was smashed into splinters, flaming chunks of wood and twisted bits of metal from the banding flung outwards by the shockwave. Burns and Ivory took the worst of it, blown backwards off their feet by the force of the explosion. Jaune and Heyman, close to the door but off to the sides, were buffeted by the blast, while Yang was barely fast enough to fling up her arms over her face so that she was pelted by debris but not hurt through the tough leather of her duster. Lacking her reflexes, Mondegreen caught a splinter to the cheek and had an additional piece of bad luck when the ram, torn free from Burns and Ivory's grip, bounced once and cracked into his shin.
"See if they're okay," she snapped at him, even as she vaulted over the fallen constables and charged the door, swinging her scatterguns up into position as she did so. Jaune and Heyman whirled out, following her charge, pistols at the ready.
The inside of the warehouse looked like something out of a nightmare illustration of a steam-driven factory: metal scaffolding running around the sides, a large electrical generator humming with power, chemical tanks for the electrolyzing of acid to produce the hydrogen gas. The whole thing was dominated, though, by the airship, small for its kind but still massive, that filled the upper center of the room.
These details were all things that Yang took in at a glance, her mind absorbing without really being aware of them. Her conscious awareness was dominated by one thing only: Torchwick! Forty feet straight in front of her, he wore the same white coat and black bowler that Ruby and Jaune had described, cane lightly dangling in one hand.
She was just leveling a gun to fire at him when a man jumped her from the right, swinging a heavy wrench down at her. Yang whirled aside just in time so that the blow whistled past her, the wind of its passing tickling her cheek. She brought her knee up fast, ramming it into the man's midsection, and in the next moment Heyman was there, grappling with him.
Shots rang out, clanging off metal. One clearly hit a pipe, and there was a hissing spray of steam.
"Get ready to cast off!" Torchwick roared. "Open the roof!" Off in a back corner, a wiry, spectacled man in coveralls threw his weight against a heavy bar, hauling the lever down. Yang fired at him and actually scored a glancing blow to the side of his head, but he fell forward, his body jackknifing across the lever and continuing to force it down. With a loud clunk, it fell into position and at once machinery came to life, gears beginning to turn, massive cogwheels creaking and groaning, chains rattling like a legion of ghosts as they were hauled through pulleys.
High above, a narrow gap began to show in the roof, the cloudy night sky a thin, dark line against the metal running lengthwise down the center of the warehouse. Slowly, the machinery began to pull the roof back, segments starting to fold like a bellows.
Yang wasted precious seconds trying to figure out of there was a way to disable the machinery and keep the roof closed without having to somehow get all the way across the warehouse floor and throw the lever. There probably was, but it would take more mechanical knowledge than she possessed and probably more firepower than she carried. Rather than waste any of that firepower on the machinery, she aimed and fired at a man lining up a shot at Jaune's side, the beanbag round taking him in the hip and sending him sprawling back. He clutched convulsively at the trigger of his revolver when he fell; the gun discharged into the air and the bullet rang off a metal stanchion instead of finding a home in Jaune's side.
"Get her," Torchwick said. His tone was exasperated; his voice made it sound like his order was the most obvious thing in the world, which maybe it ought to have been. He retreated towards the dangling rope ladder that connected to the airship's gondola while a scruffy man near him scrambled towards Yang, pulling out a revolver.
She vaulted over a standing pile of machinery, ducking behind it just in time for a bullet to sing over her head. A second shot rattled off the machine, unfortunately doing no damage to whatever it was. She popped up over and returned the fire, but missed. The thug ducked aside anyway, shooting wildly at Yang as he did, and she dropped back behind cover. Shots continued to ring out, Jaune and Heyman continuing to trade fire with Torchwick's men.
There was one shell left in her right-hand scattergun; the left was empty, and the continuing rattle of the chains told Yang that she didn't have time for an extended firefight in any case. She stayed low, scrambling to her right behind a nest of pipes and conduits. The gaps between the pipes were wide enough that her outline showed, and the thug she'd been trading shots with fired at her. Fortunately, neither bullet got through, and one punched into a pipe and released a hissing cloud of steam that helped give her additional cover as she rounded the corner of a valve-studded terminal. Whirling, she fired her last scattergun shell and was rewarded by a grunt of pain.
"Torchwick!" she shouted, spinning the empty guns back into their rest position to free her hands. "Don't think you can get away!"
"I think the odds are with me so far, sunshine!" he laughed.
Her hand dropped to the LeMat's grip. Here was one man she didn't mind bringing down with live ammunition. Maybe since Ruby had woken up, there wasn't the savage hunger to put him down like a rabid dog she'd felt before, but she still wouldn't hesitate.
"Yang, look out!"
It was only Jaune's shout that made her spin to the right, her open side, and take one quick sidestep as she did, saving her from the sudden attack. The thug's bull-rush took her on the right shoulder and still carried enough force to knock her crashing into the pipes. Yang was still a young woman, after all, and when she couldn't use strength or leverage she just didn't have the sheer size necessary to absorb the attack, the force of which had carried the other man into the machinery next to her.
Sheer size, on the other hand, was exactly what Torchwick's thug had going for him. He shook his head to clear it, growling like a bear as he rounded on her. He could have been the big brother of the Manchester Mauler, at least six and a half feet tall, barrel-chested, hair shaved to a boxer's peach-fuzz to keep an opponent from grabbing it, the corded arms that looked almost as thick as Yang's waist left bare by his sleeveless leather vest.
"Damn, I don't know what your mom feeds you, but I ought to get me some."
A hamlike fist whipped around with way too much speed for comfort. Stereotypically, a man that size had to be slow and lumbering, and maybe he actually was, but when muscles that powerful told his body to move, well, it moved.
Yang flung herself left, out of the way, and landed a body shot to the ribs with her gauntleted fist. Shaved Head didn't seem to even notice; his vest might have absorbed some of the force but more simply his massive chest was so thickly muscled it was like he was wearing a suit of armor.
The complete lack of effect caught Yang by surprise, and when Shaved Head's fist came whipping back around all she could do was get her own forearms up to block the punch. The shock jolted up both arms to her shoulders and actually drove her back a couple of inches, her boots skidding on the floor. It was only the metal framework of her gun rig taking some of the blow that saved her from the very real risk of a fractured arm, she thought.
Man-mountain or not, a bullet would slow him down, Yang told herself, but the truth was that she was happy her shotguns were empty. Because her goal was to bring down Torchwick, she'd have blasted the huge fighter down and called it a day, but that didn't mean she'd have liked it. Denied that option, she found herself unable to repress the smile that spread across her face.
This was going to be good.
~X X X~
This isn't good.
Roman Torchwick had no idea how the police had run him to ground, and he hadn't wasted his time worrying about it. Given the more immediate problems to be had, it would just have been a distraction.
Figuring out where the mistakes had been made was a luxury for people who survived making those mistakes.
He ground his teeth in frustration as he saw Inspector Arc warn Xiao Long of Bullingham's charge, spoiling the former Birmingham Bull's surprise attack. Torchwick fired a shot from his cane in Arc's general direction; the Dust shell burst next to him and sent him diving for cover.
"Cast off!" Torchwick barked, then bolted for the rope ladder that descended from the airship's gondola. He grabbed the rope, then looked up and cursed. Mallard, damn his eyes, was climbing down.
"We've got a problem, Mr. Torchwick," the pilot said as he let go and dropped the last few feet. He pushed his goggles up into his unkempt, sandy hair.
"What kind of problem? I thought the envelope was full and the engines fueled?"
"It is and they are. It's the aft lines. They're snarled and the release mechanism won't work."
"Have you considered cutting them? In case you haven't noticed, we've got a bit of a situation going on here." He swept his arm in a half-circle, indicating the chaos going on throughout the warehouse. The rattle of machinery, the sharp reports of gunfire, the hiss of escaping steam, it all made for a mad cacophony. Torchwick hated it; he knew well the value of chaos as a weapon and freely used it, but being caught up in it himself was a different story. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, popped into his head, a scrap of education summing up his current predicament quite well.
"You can't just wave a knife at these hawsers, Mr. Torchwick. It takes a strong line to hold the Puck in place, and you'd have to saw through 'em unless you had a machine to do your cutting. Faster to pull them on this end."
The man was right, too, blast it. Cutting the lines would be a matter of minutes, not seconds.
"All right, then. Go get the one there." He pointed at the back corner of the warehouse, not far from the roof controls. "Jergens!" he shouted.
"Here, sir," the groom popped out from where he'd taken cover when he was trading shots with Xiao Long. Mallard was already in motion; at least he was backing up his "bearer of bad tidings" routine with quick action to help fix the problems instead of talking about them.
Torchwick pulled Jergens up by his upper arm.
"You see that line? The rope holding the Puck down?" he said, pointing.
"Yes, sir."
"The release mechanism on the airship is jammed. You need to get over there where it's fastened and pull the pin so we can take off."
The path to that corner, though, would take Jergens past where Xiao Long and Bullingham were fighting, a fact that the groom picked up on right away. That an encounter with the Bull actually could be fairly described as a "fight" was the kind of thing that prompted Jergens's reaction.
"What if she tries to stop me?"
"Do you remember your Bible, Jergens?"
"My…Bible, sir?" The Good Book, it will be appreciated, was not a common topic of conversation among the professional criminal fraternity.
"Samson and Delilah, in particular. I wouldn't say she has miraculous strength from God, but she is a pretty young woman and I think it would rather take the starch out of her to find all that lovely blonde mane looking more like Mallard's, don't you?"
Jergens smirked at the thought.
"Yes, sir!"
"Not a pit fight aficionado, are you?" Torchwick murmured under his breath.
"Did you say something, sir?"
"Get going. I don't plan to wait around here for Arc's reinforcements to show up." He thrust the groom in the general direction he wanted him to go, so that the man stumbled a couple of steps ahead before taking off in a sprint. Torchwick immediately did the same—back to the ladder. He'd been telling the truth when he'd said that he had no intention of waiting. If the rest of his men could get back and join him, good enough. He'd be happy to have them along if they could make it aboard in time.
If not, well, there was a reason he'd made sure he knew how to fly the airship by himself.
~X X X~
A/N: For the curious, the "envelope" is the gas-bag of an airship and the "gondola" is the part that hangs underneath where the passengers and crew go. In a full-size zeppelin, the envelope isn't just a giant balloon, but a rigid structure within which are separate "cells" that are filled with gas, and there are catwalks and the like where the crew can get up inside the envelope for maintenance purposes (which, y'know, would have been a pretty darned cool setting for a fight scene). Torchwick's airship, being smaller than normal, is more like a balloon with a single cell to fill, as suggested in the story text.